Manhood: The facts of life presented to men

Manhood by Clement Wood is a sex-education and social-hygiene handbook written in the early 20th century. It addresses male adolescence, love, mating, and sexual ethics, aiming to replace taboo and superstition with clear knowledge, responsible choice, and mutual respect.

The book opens with adolescence, urging frank parental and school instruction about the body, warning against early indulgence, and encouraging physical fitness and self-control. It traces the evolution of love—natural, romantic, and conjugal—adds a psychoanalytic arc from self-love to heterosexual maturity, and argues for growing gender equality in choosing mates. Wood lays out an ethics of mating that weighs companionship, children, and continuing courtship; promotes eugenic screening and birth control; and surveys futurist ideas (state eugenics, ectogenesis) alongside cautions about state abuse. He calls for systematic sex education in schools and homes and treats lovemaking as an art requiring patience and empathy. A section on mistakes warns against overindulgence, emphasizes restraint in youth, and details the dangers of gonorrhea and syphilis. He redefines chastity as intelligent selection rather than abstinence, sketches a more flexible single standard for both sexes, advocates easier, dignified divorce when love ends, and concludes with an ideal of purity grounded in health, knowledge, and consideration for the partner and future children.