Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

Tom and I became the best of friends in fourth
grade. Throughout our grade school years we were
virtually inseparable. Ours was a typical
childhood relationship, one between two people
who, by chance, happened to be of the opposite
sex.
Our parents thought that everything was cute and
perfectly harmless. Actually from my standpoint,
all was quite harmless.
But, according to sociologists, if there is an innate period it can
be modified, for the notion of an innate predetermined psychological
sexuality does not correspond with existing evidence. According to a
social theory of sexual development, the individual begins life with a
biological capacity for sexual maturity and a psychosexual plasticity
capable of developing along a variety of lines depending upon the definition
of social roles in his particular culture and community as well
as upon his unique learning, especially during the formative periods of
life. (Brown and Lynn, May 1966).
Rather than passing through a set series of sexual stages determined
by physical growth, children develop at different rates and in a
wide variety of directions depending upon how they are raised. In some
communities they may go through the classic series of stages in attitude
toward the opposite sex; pre-school friendships, elementary school
dislikes, followed by junior high school awakening and high school attraction
and involvement. In other communities, perhaps only a few
miles away, the series of stages may be quite different. Broderick
found communities in the United States in which there were well-established
romances going on in the kindergarten class and a great deal of
giggling and gossiping over couples. Among these five year olds, whois-going-to-marry-whom
was a common subject of conversation. By eight
and nine years of age children played kissing games at their parties.
By ages ten and eleven nearly half had begun to date and most had a series
of crushes on adults and other children. Ninety per cent of the
fifth grade boys in one community were involved in what Broderick referred
to as “special” relationships with girlfriends. In another community
the crowning social event of the year was the class dance, a
“date” affair in which a Queen and King of the fifth grade were chosen.
(Broderick, 1966).
Anthropologists have complained for years that both the hormone and
the psychoanalytic theories failed to account for the sexual activities
of young children in certain primitive societies. United States
data has shown that romantic interest in the opposite sex begin in infancy
or early childhood, depending on the degree of permissiveness and
stimulation in the social environment. This is not to deny the marked
impact of puberty upon sexual attitudes and experiences.
Psychoanalytic theory of sexual development has had more emphasis
in the human sexuality literature than it deserves, particularly in the
literature on infant and child sexuality. This is so, first of all, be-
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