Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce
Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce
Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce
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Once in fifth or sixth grade I asked my father<br />
what it meant when a girl got in trouble. He<br />
said, “Ask your mother,” but he was so<br />
embarrassed by the question that I didn’t ask<br />
Mom.<br />
My girl friend <strong>and</strong> I walked home from school <strong>and</strong><br />
she told me about the funny sensation she had<br />
experienced while lying in bed the night before.<br />
I told her I, too, had experienced the same<br />
situation; we decided to ask my mother about it.<br />
She gave us a vague explanation, but it was<br />
nothing more than a warning not to do it again.<br />
This experience planted in my mind that to talk<br />
about the body was bad <strong>and</strong> it only had dirty<br />
connotations. I slowly became quite selfconscious<br />
about my body.<br />
Indirectly my parents told me plenty. They made<br />
me feel that sex was dirty <strong>and</strong> was something to<br />
be ashamed of or embarrassed about. Yet they<br />
joked about it <strong>and</strong> my father always had some<br />
“girly” magazines lying around the house. At<br />
first I got a big kick out of looking at them,<br />
but later they just disgusted me <strong>and</strong> made me<br />
hate being a girl if all the men did was look at<br />
our bodies <strong>and</strong> make jokes about us.<br />
Throughout my childhood, I was taught that a<br />
young lady was to be properly modest <strong>and</strong> that<br />
sex <strong>and</strong> the body was not to be spoken of, not<br />
even to my parents or my brothers.<br />
I can remember once asking my mother what p.g.<br />
meant <strong>and</strong> she replying ‘pretty girl.’ I knew<br />
what it meant but you might say I was testing<br />
her.<br />
Terminology such as ‘the curse’ or ‘sick days’<br />
when referring to menstruation certainly<br />
produced fear to say the least.<br />
When I asked them (my parents) how a person got<br />
pregnant, they replied, “you become pregnant<br />
only when you are married <strong>and</strong> in love.” I was<br />
morbidly afraid of falling in love for fear I<br />
would get pregnant.<br />
When Mom came home with a paper-back book for<br />
teenagers, I was very uninhibited, ready to<br />
learn <strong>and</strong> accept all that life had to offer. I<br />
just wanted to know! Mom said we’d read it<br />
together which I thought was just about perfect.<br />
That night nothing more was said so I<br />
decided to delve in <strong>and</strong> that night was reading<br />
it in bed when Mom walked in. She said that as<br />
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