Unless otherwise noted, all items are from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, Special & Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.

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How do you talk about sex? For most of human history, sex was a taboo subject. In Western culture, sex education is the product of a century in development. In the United States, sex education was formally introduced into the curriculum in 1920, though the instruction was inept. The Federal Government tasked the Office of Education, now Department of Education, to publish training materials for educators to effectively teach wide-eyed adolescents about the birds and the bees. Yet the late 1960s and beyond was the true awakening of the how’s, why’s and what’s of sex education.

Children’s literature illustrates the changing attitudes towards sex education over time. Early unscientific and superstitious conversations were largely fear-based and focused on controlling urges and very specific gender roles. Publications from the late 20^th century provided ways for young people to be comfortable with their bodies through scientific facts and, in some cases, sexualities. Contemporary books go beyond procreation, introducing comprehensive guides to sexuality, gender identity, and consent. This increased sex education has grown young people’s sexual knowledge, awareness, and autonomy. It has also improved their attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health and behaviors while affirming the position of sex education within a larger framework of human rights.

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How Babies Are Made

For younger children, conversations about sex may not be comfortable. Yet they will ask the age-old question, “Where do babies come from?”

Many early books for young children compared human reproduction to that of animals and plants. This is where we get the phrase the “birds and the bees.” More contemporary books often educate in graphic detail. They may personify human sperm and eggs or take a more scientific approach. Some even include pop-up diagrams that focus more on physiology than sexual intercourse.

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A Gendered Education

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LGBTQIAP

Early children’s literature books completely ignored different sexualities. Later sex education books portrayed non-hetero sexualities as sick and abnormal, especially homosexuality. Recent contemporary texts, however, are more inclusive and include representations of a spectrum of sexualities, which teach children to respect and understand different sexualities and behaviors. They are all normal.

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Masturbation

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HIV and AIDS

The AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s created a new genre of educational materials focusing on dispelling rumors associated with contracting this fatal disease. Although education and inclusion of homosexuality increased in publications, some still perpetuated the Christian Conservative myth that AIDS was a primarily a “gay plague.”

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Consent

Education about consensual sex and privacy is a very recent phenomenon. The goal of consent education is to protect youth from sexual assault and abuse or growing up to be abusers. But it goes beyond sex education. It also teaches children to set boundaries for their bodies and develop ways of saying no.

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Sexual Assault

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