It is only essential that she should have the most absolute faith in the purity and dignity of her physical relationship to her child, and be able to speak of it with frankness and tenderness.

When that essential condition is fulfilled every mother has all the knowledge that her young child needs.
Among the best authorities, both men and women, in all the countries where this matter is attracting attention, there seems now to be unanimity of opinion in favor of the elementary facts of the baby's relationship to its mother being explained to the child by the mother as soon as the child begins to ask questions.
Thus in Germany Moll has repeatedly argued in this sense; he insists that sexual enlightenment should be mainly a private and individual matter; that in schools there should be no general and personal warnings about masturbation, etc.

(though at a later age he approves of instruction in regard to venereal diseases), but that the mother is the proper person to impart intimate knowledge to the child, and that any age is suitable for the commencement of such enlightenment, provided it is put into a form fitted for the age (Moll, op.cit., p.

264).
At the Mannheim meeting of the Congress of the German Society for Combating Venereal Disease, when the question of sexual enlightenment formed the sole subject of discussion, the opinion in favor of early teaching by the mother prevailed.

"It is the mother who must, in the first place, be made responsible for the child's clear understanding of sexual things, so often lacking," said Frau Krukenberg ("Die Aufgabe der Mutter," _Sexualpaedagogik_, p.