Show and Tell

The photographer says that he "underwent great emotional stress" while taking the pictures for the German book. U.S. parents may get even more wrought up when an American edition is published in May by St. Martin's Press. The book: Show Me!, a commentary on sex intended for youngsters and their parents, illustrated with startling photos of nude children touching one another and young adults engaging in various explicit sexual acts, including intercourse.

The idea for the book came from Helga Fleischhauer-Hardt, 38, a German psychologist and director of a school near Basel, Switzerland, that teaches parents how to deal with children. While preparing a paper on early sexual development, Fleischhauer-Hardt decided that the many books meant to instruct children about sex were inadequate.

Impressive Photos. Deciding to write one herself, she produced a simplified Freudian commentary on child rearing and sex education, which runs as an appendix to the book. She also chose an American photographer, Will McBride, whose pictures for a German sexual encyclopedia published in the U.S. in 1971 as The Sex Book (Herder & Herder), had interested her. McBride took hundreds of technically impressive photos, mostly of friends' children between the ages of five and 13. The couples in the intercourse pictures, who appear to be about 13, are actually aged 19 and 20, McBride reports.

Across the top of the full-page photos runs a commentary in coy kidspeak.

Over a picture of a toddler touching his mother's nipple: "My mommy has the most fantastic breasts." Above a photo of a nude little boy: "I've got a penis and you don't."

Fleischhauer-Hardt believes that "early sexual games encourage confident sexual adjustment" and finds it astonishing that "many parents are reluctant to allow their children free access to their bedroom." If a child discovers them making love, she suggests that the parents should say affectionately: "We love each other very much right now." As for the book, she says that the idea is that parents should show their children only the parts of it they feel they are ready for. "In no way," she says in the introduction, "can looking at the pictures damage a child, even if he or she does not yet understand them."

St. Martin's Press reports that its salesmen are finding much less advance resistance to the book than expected, and Editor Paul De Angelis says, "We really don't expect a legal battle." If one comes, it may spur sales. In Germany the book sold only 6,000 copies in the first ten months, then quickly sold 6,000 more when a Saarland politician demanded that its sale be restricted.

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