Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

Preadolescent-Animal Sexual Encounters
Preadolescent-animal sexual encounters are largely, but not entirely,
confined to farm boys. Between ten and twelve years of age
there is a rapid increase in the number of boys involved in such activity
and activity reaches a peak just before adolescence. Ultimately,
upon reaching high school age, 20 percent of rural males will have had
some animal experience to the point of orgasm. However, the incidence
of city boys who have had sexual experience with animals is only onethirtieth
to one-seventieth that of rural boys. Large differences in
frequency of animal contacts between rural and urban girls do not exist.
Only a few (1.5 percent) of both rural and urban females have some
sort of sexual relation with an animal in preadolescence. Most often it
is the result of some accidental physical contact with a pet, a result
of curiosity concerning animal anatomy, or some deliberate approach on
the part of the animal that precipitates the event. (Kinsey, 1948, p.
671-673; Kinsey, 1953, p. 505).
I remember having been worried earlier in the summer
that I was pregnant when my dog licked my genitalia.
Trends
In looking back over the encounters discussed in this chapter, it
would appear that preadolescence as a period of latency has been overstressed.
In societies where children are permitted to do so, they increase
rather than decrease their sexual activities during
preadolescence. Sexual encounters first include auto-genital stimulation
and mutual masturbation with the same and opposite sex, but with
increasing age they are characterized more and more by attempts at heterosexual
intercourse. By the time they reach puberty, (in permissive
societies) expressions of sexuality by preadolescents consist predominately
of the accepted adult form of heterosexual intercourse, the pattern
which they will continue to follow throughout their sexually
active years of life. (Ford and Beach, 1951, p. 189-190).
Even in a sexually restrictive society such as ours, children go
through stages of heterosexual involvement. In some communities these
stages begin in preadolescence or earlier; in other communities the
stages may begin later. The stages may also take longer or shorter time
to complete, depending upon the community and the individual. In preadolescence,
if not before, youngsters form attachments or “crushes” on
persons outside the family. The love feeling is expressed to the other
person in a form which depends on the youngster’s age, his sexual and
social maturity, and the permissiveness of his superiors. It may appear
in the form of roughhouse love play (hitting a boy, pulling a
girl’s hair), writing notes, inviting to a party, or simply walking
someone home. If the other person responds to this attention, the two
may enter into the first of what often turns out to be a long series of
close relationships with peers of the opposite sex. Some are formal and
intensive; others are informal and relaxed. Some involve sexual experimentation;
others do not. Often the encounter is a part of a specific
school setting or occasion such as a band or play rehearsal, or visits
to relatives (where female cousins are a favorite object of attention
for boys). There is little doubt that these encounters with their varying
degrees of emotional involvement influence later attitudes toward
119