Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

societies that are considerably more permissive. Sexual life begins in
earnest among the Trobrianders at six to eight years for girls and ten
to twelve for boys. Sex play includes masturbation, oral stimulation of
the genitals of the same and opposite sex, and heterosexual copulation.
At any time a couple may retire to the bush, the bachelors’ hut,
an isolated yam house, or any convenient place and there engage in prolonged
sexual play. Among the Ila-speaking peoples of Africa this age
is regarded as a time of preparation for adult life and mature sexual
functions. It is reported that there are no virgins among these people
after the age of ten. The Lepcha of India believe that girls will not
mature without the benefit of sexual intercourse. (Ford and Beach,
1951, p. 191). Early sex play among boys and girls characteristically
involves many forms of mutual masturbation and usually ends in attempted
copulation. By the time they are eleven and twelve years old,
most girls regularly engage in sexual intercourse.
Ramsey (1943) reports that the preadolescent sexual encounters of
boys with girls in his United States’ sample (when they did occur) most
frequently involved manual manipulation associated with direct observation
of each other’s body. Exhibitionistic sex play was the next most
frequent type of behavior. Other forms of play included attempts at intercourse
and oral contacts. Approximately 33 percent of the boys reportedly
had attempted intercourse before adolescence. The frequency of
preadolescent heterosexual encounters of various kinds as reported by
286 of the boys was as follows:
No experience 34% 16 to 25 times 8%
1 to 5 times 27% 26 to 50 times 7%
6 to 15 times 15% above 50 times 9%
The number of different females involved with each boy in the preadolescent
heterosexual encounters were reported as follows:
No experience 34% 16 to 25 females 5%
1 to 5 females 47% 26 to 50 females 3%
6 to 15 females 9% more than 50 females 3%
(Ramsey, 1943, p. 227)
The ages of the female partners of the preadolescent boys who participated
in such encounters were in 80 percent of the cases within one
year of the same age as that of the boy; in 11 percent of the cases the
girls were two or more years older; and for the remaining 9 percent the
partners were two or more years younger. The girls involved were usually
neighborhood friends, female relatives, girls met during family
visits, females of the same family, and occasionally an older girl or
woman.
Probably one of the most significant factors in
forming my sexual attitudes and actions was an
instance with my cousin when he was twelve and I
was nine. One day he, whom I admired more than
anyone in the whole world, and I were playing on
the bed when everyone else was out. In the
course of our play we began to explore each
other’s bodies and to manipulate each other’s
genitals. This made us both a little uneasy, so
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