Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

IV. A FEW WORDS OF MY OWN
It is good to let all children (not only those brought to the clinician
with behavior problems) speak for themselves about their own
sexuality. In the preceding pages I have let children--infants through
preadolescents--speak for themselves as much as possible with only the
minimum of required interpretation. I have been constantly aware and
motivated by the desire to provide an alternative, a balance so to
speak, to the preponderance of works that have stressed the pathology
in infant and child sexuality. These works often contain direct testimony
from children with serious sexual problems who have been referred
to child guidance clinics or private practitioners. This limited testimony
from a small sample of atypical children supports a heavy superstructure
of professional analysis, interpretation, and generalization.
My role has been that of organizer and facilitator--giving the young a
chance to speak, and arranging their comments under appropriate topics
and headings. Of course, not all children in the United States have
spoken here, not even a representative sample, but a significant segment
nevertheless. The statements of the young in the three preceding
chapters represent the ebb and flow of human sexual experience among no
less than 300 children brought up in a moderately repressive society.
I will not summarize what they have said. Their remarks do not lend
themselves easily to generalization and may be rendered trite in the
process. I remind the reader that we were interested in insights, hopefully
in depth, rather than in quantifying incidences.
While working as a teacher and researcher among students for thirty
years, I have formed some impressions about youth and human sexuality.
These impressions are supported by my own empirical research and by
what other students of human sexuality have observed. It is against
this background that I base my few words of conclusion.
Some parents in the United States continue to accept sexual repression
in childhood, believing that it is right. While, at the other extreme,
perhaps two percent (or is it five percent or ten percent?) of
parents are permissive, seeing nothing wrong with sex play among children
and not attempting to stop it. Would it be too bold to estimate
that less than one percent of parents in the United States provide a
wholesome atmosphere and positive education for the affectional-sexualerotic
development of their children? The idea that man’s sexual nature
is one of the aspects of human personality that needs to grow and
develop from infancy onward is slow in emerging.
Our culture has gone to great extremes to emphasize the contrast in
sexual nature between the child and the adult. The child is seen as
sexless; the adult cherishes and esteems his sexual virility. Rather
than continuous conditioning from infancy on, we practice discontinuous
conditioning as far as sexual development is concerned. The “sexless”
child is expected to revise his attitudes toward his body and its
erotic-genital potential almost totally as he passes from child to
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