THE HYGEINE OF MARRIAGE: SEX TABOOS LEADS UNHAPPINESS
Even in some of the normal problems of physical hygiene, our sex taboos have led to unbelievable neglect. Incredible as it may seem, at the zenith of our mid-Victorian moral era there actually were mothers who allowed their daughters to experience their first menstruation without ever having given them a word of information or advice about it, because it was not nice to talk about such things. Or even if mothers had the courage to talk to their daughters on this subject, their remarks often consisted chiefly of handing on traditional superstitions regarding menstruation and the later "change of life," producing a mental attitude that caused unnecessary difficulties.
We have already mentioned the effects of sex ignorance on the maternal mortality rate, but maternal morbidity from this cause has probably been as serious a result. The number of women suffering because of lack of proper medical attention, from disorders resulting from childbirth, has been legion. Yet this is due not to a shortage in skilled physicians but to public ignorance and indifference which will continue as long as our code of sex morals makes frank discussion of these topics seem poor taste.
Finally, there are many intangible ways in which sex taboos have produced unhappiness. In most cases neither parents nor schools give children any sexual education, but hush them up or evade their questions, thereby giving them a deep sense of shame in relation to the whole forbidden area of sex. The result is that children have to grope their way to maturity with only the misinformation and obscene vocabulary of the neighborhood children for their guide, so that their preparation for marriage is, in most cases, nothing, or worse than nothing.
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Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction