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During the years 1900-1940, the sex education of young people was the object of virulent debate. Whether through proposals for sex education at school, conferences or informative booklets, the methods proposed aimed to adapt sexual conduct according to its reproductive potential and to control the health of unborn children by defining sexual models in line with demographic requirements. Concern for the future of the population, its medical condition, and anxiety about the rise of syphilis underlay the methods proposed that were extremely gender-biased. Sex education was thus conceived as an instrument for the reproduction and safeguarding of the race, clearly distinguished from its potential for the encouragement of vice.