The Need of Sex Education in Negro Schools

Abstract

In the office of a large child placing agency, in an Eastern city, one dreary morning, the telephone rang. It was the major of a Salvation Army Hospital wanting to commit to us an infant born to a fourteen year old unwed mother. The latter was said to have no conception of morals. The child had related that she had intercourse because there was nothing else to do. As I replaced the receiver after requesting a summary on the case, I pondered on the last statement of the informer. In considering the statement, I asked myself this question, Were most of the cases of young unwed mothers, that seemed to flood my desk, victims of such unfortunate tragedies simply because they had nothing constructive to do? I thumbed back over the referals; there was one of a sixteen year old girl from a type home, she belonged to a Y group, played on the high school basket ball team, sang in the Junior choir. In fact, it was at a church picnic that conception took place. Then, there was a seventeen-year-old girl, an only child, who had shown real talent at the piano. Her mother had told her if she kissed a boy, she would become a mother. She tried it, and nothing happened, so she decided it would be safe to take one more step. The mother when called on to corroborate her daughter's narrative cries, Oh, of course, that was all the explanation, I gave her, she was just a child. After examining closely several case histories of these unwed mothers whose babies had been referred to our agency for placements into foster homes, and seeing most of the girls' mothers blush and stammer when they discussed their girls' predicaments, I felt that these girls had received no knowledge that could help them to understand the force of sex. They, I felt, had been