Youth and Sex | Page 5

God.
Another characteristic of adolescence is to be found in gregariousness, or what has been
sometimes called the gang spirit. Boys, and to almost as great a degree girls, form
themselves into companies or gangs, which frequently possess a high degree of
organisation. They elaborate special languages, they have their own form of shorthand,
their passwords, their rites and ceremonies. The gang has its elected leader, its officers,
its members; and although it is liable to sudden disruption and seldom outlasts a few
terms of school-life, each succeeding club or company is for the time being of paramount
importance in the estimation of its members. The gang spirit may at times cause trouble
and lead to anxiety, but if rightly directed it may be turned to good account. It is the germ
of the future capacity to organise men and women into corporate life--the very method by
which much public and national work is readily accomplished, but which is impossible to
accomplish by individual effort.
3. Changes in the Religion of the Adolescent.--The religion of the adolescent is apt to be
marked by fervour and earnest conviction, the phenomenon of "conversion" almost
constantly occurring during adolescence. The girl looks upon eternal truths from a
completely new standpoint, or at any rate with eyes that have been purged and
illuminated by the throes of conversion. From a period of great anxiety and doubt she
emerges to a time of intense love and devotion, to an eager desire to prove herself worthy,
and to offer a sacrifice of the best powers she possesses. Unfortunately for peace of mind,
the happy epoch succeeding conversion not unfrequently ends in a dismal time of
intellectual doubt and spiritual darkness. Just as the embryonic love of the youthful

adolescent leads to a time when the opposite sex is rather an object of dislike than of
attraction, so the fervour of early conversion is apt to lead to a time of desolation; but just
as the incomplete sex love of early adolescence finds its antitype and fine flower in the
later fully developed love of honourable man and woman, so does the too rapturous and
uncalculating religious devotion of these early years revive after the period of doubt,
transfigured and glorified into the religious conviction and devotion which makes the
strength, the joy, and the guiding principle of adult life.
Much depends on the circumstances and people surrounding the adolescent. Her
unbounded capacity for hero-worship leads in many instances to a conscious or
unconscious copying of parent, guardian, or teacher; and although the ideals of the young
are apt to far outpace those of the adult whose days of illusion are over, yet they are
probably formed on the same type. One sees this illustrated by generations in the same
family holding much the same religious or political opinions and showing the same
aptitude for certain professions, games, and pursuits. Much there is in heredity, but
probably there is still more in environment.


CHAPTER II
.
OUR DUTIES TOWARDS ADOLESCENT GIRLS.
These may be briefly summed up by saying that we have to provide adolescent girls with
all things that are necessary for their souls and their bodies, but any such bald and
wholesale enunciation of our duty helps but little in clearing one's ideas and in pointing
out the actual manner in which we are to perform it.
First, with regard to the bodies of adolescent girls; Their primary needs, just like the
primary needs of all living beings, are food, warmth, shelter, exercise and rest, with
special care in sickness.
Food.--In spite of the great advance of knowledge in the present day, it is doubtful
whether much practical advance has been made in the dietetics of children and
adolescents, and it is to be feared that our great schools are especially deficient in this
most important respect. Even when the age of childhood is past, young people require a
much larger amount of milk than is usually included in their diet sheet. It would be well
for them to begin the day with porridge and milk or some such cereal preparation. Coffee
or cocoa made with milk should certainly have the preference over tea for breakfast, and
in addition to the porridge or other such dish, fish, egg, or bacon, with plenty of bread
and butter, should form the morning repast. The midday meal should consist of fresh
meat, fish, or poultry, with an abundance of green vegetables and a liberal helping of
sweet pudding. The articles of diet which are most deficient in our lists are milk, butter,
and sugar. There is an old prejudice against sugar which is quite unfounded so far as the
healthy individual is concerned. Cane sugar has recently been proved to be a most
valuable muscle food, and