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Updated: October 29, 2025
The fact that the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis was organized by a group of people in New York City tended from the beginning to make it a local society. While for several years it took the lead in sex-hygiene and enrolled members residing in many parts of the United States, it was never a national organization.
For convenience I shall use the following brief headings: Personal sex-hygiene, social diseases, social evil, illegitimacy, sexual morality, sexual vulgarity, sexual problems and marriage, eugenics. These sexual problems toward whose solution special instruction of young people may help are stated here in the order in which they have attracted attention as reasons for sex-education.
The National Education Association, at Minneapolis, adopted the following resolutions in line with the latest principles of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis and the American Social Hygiene Association: "The Association, re-affirming its belief in the constructive value of education in sex-hygiene, directs attention to the grave dangers, ethical and social, arising out of a sex consciousness stimulated by undue emphasis upon sex problems and relations.
In the farming towns the term "literature" was applied only to a special kind of printed matter; there was Prohibition literature, Sex-Hygiene literature, and, during a scourge of cattle disease, there was Hoof-and-Mouth literature. This special application of the word didn't bother Claude, but his mother, being an old-fashioned school-teacher, complained about it.
Thus, for instance, personal sex-hygiene was the chief reason recognized twenty years ago; social diseases began to attract public attention ten years ago; commercial prostitution has been especially prominent in the discussions of the past five years; and only recently has there been emphasis on sex-education with reference to eugenics.
It should be noted that "social hygiene" as a substitute for "sex-hygiene" is narrower in that it does not include the personal problems of health as affected by sexual processes. This is a serious omission, for certainly all sex-hygiene taught before the later adolescent years should be personal and not social.
In conclusion, it seems probable that popular knowledge of the social side of sex-hygiene will reduce the amount of venereal disease by teaching some people the dangers of promiscuity, by adoption of certain sanitary precautions that lessen danger of infection, by leading people to seek competent medical aid which, while often failing to restore the victim's health, will probably eliminate the danger of contagion for others, and by intelligent support of laws that directly or indirectly affect the social diseases.
In fact, most people who have not seriously studied the problems of sex-education seem to believe that one concentrated dose of sex-instruction in adolescent years is sufficient guidance for young people. Such limited personal instruction might suffice if sex-education were limited to sex-hygiene.
As for the extravagant claims made for the teaching of sex-hygiene, I have too much faith in the good sense of the American people to believe that it will ever be generally and regularly taught in American schools.
Two general terms, "sex-instruction" and "sex-education," are available as all-inclusive designations of the desirable instruction concerning any aspects of sex. They are quite free from the above objections to "sex-hygiene," and it is highly desirable that they should be used in all educational discussions where there is no specific reference to the problems of health.
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