The history of sex education enables us to gain valuable insights into the cultural constructions of what different societies have defined as 'normal' sexuality and sexual health. Yet, the history of sex education has only recently attracted the full attention of historians of modern sexuality.

List of Figures. Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction: Shaping Sexual Knowledge of the Young. Lutz D.H. Sauerteig and Roger Davidson. Sex Education, Sexual Rights, Society and the Child. 2. In Ignorance and in Knowledge: Reflections on the History of Sex Education in Britain. Lesley A. Hall. 3. Sex Education and the Law in England and Wales: The Importance of Legal Narratives. Ann Blair and Daniel Monk. Shaping Sex Education Policy: Religion, Medicine and the State. 4. Taking the Middle Way: Sex Education Debates in Sweden in the Early Twentieth Century. Lena Lennerhed. 5. The Growing Pains of Sex Education in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), 1945-1969. Mark Fenemore. 6. Purity and Pedagogy: The Alliance-Scottish Council and School Sex Education in Scotland, 1955-1967. Roger Davidson. 7. Carnal Knowledge: The Social Politics and Experience of Sex Education in Italy, 1940-1980. Bruno Wanrooij. Sex Education and the Representation of Gendered and Sexed Bodies. 8. Representations of Pregnancy and Childbirth in (West)German Sex Education Books, 1900s-1970s. Lutz D.H. Sauerteig. 9. Purity Redefined: Catholic Attitudes towards Children's Sex Education in Austria, 1920-1936. Britta McEwen. 10. The Partial Picture: Framing the Discourse of Sex in British Educative Films of the Early 1930s. Barbara Crowther. 11. Helga (1967): West German Sex Education and the Cinema in the 1960s. By Uta Schwarz. Mapping the Sexual Knowledge and Ignorance of the Young. 12. The Social Politics and Experience of Sex Education in Early Twentieth Century Poland (1905-1939). By Magda Gawin. 13. The Experience of Sex Education in the Netherlands and Flanders in Childhood Memories from the First Half of the Twentieth Century. By Hugo Röling. Contributors. References. Index.