Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

milk. Breast feeding is significantly more successful when the amount
of milk obtained from one feeding to another does not fluctuate. (Newton
and Newton, 1967, p. 1182). Active, satisfied infants establish the
sucking reflex and rhythm quickly and seek the nipple when it is withdrawn.
The satisfaction received is likely to increase the infant’s desire
to suckle his mother frequently and fully, thus stimulating the
secretion of milk. The reaction of older infants is even more pronounced
than that of newborn infants. The total body may show alertness
and motion--rhythmic motions of hands, fingers, feet, and toes
occurring along with the rhythm of sucking. After feeding, there is a
relaxation that has been likened to the relaxation characteristic of
the conclusion of satisfactory sexual response. (Newton and Newton,
1967).
Though the sucking experience may give the infant pleasure, especially
orally, and though penile erections are common in conditions related
to the sucking experience, we must be cautious in attributing
penile erections to stimulation resulting from the sucking experience.
In other words, we may agree with those who state categorically that
there is organic pleasure in infant-other experiences without necessarily
agreeing that the pleasure is sexual in any erotic sense. (Stern,
p. 612). In some cases it may be, but in some cases it is not. It has
been reported that vigorous sucking by active infants is accompanied by
penile erection which may last throughout the sucking period and continue
for several minutes after the breast is removed. (Baliassnikova
and Model, as reported in Halverson, 1940 and Newton and Newton, 1967).
On the other hand, Halverson (1940) as a result of his experiments on
infant sucking reports that, though infants like to suck at the breast,
preferring it to the bottle, penile erection never occurred during
sucking at the breast. It is possible that the experimental situation
itself served to deter the full pleasurable response, since during the
experimental period the breast-fed infants reclined on the mother’s lap
while the mother leaned forward so that her breast was above the baby’s
face. To remove the nipple from the infant’s mouth the mother merely
assumed an upright position. In other words, the stimulation was severely
restricted, being limited to the presence of the nipple within
the infant’s mouth. No caressing, no fondling by the mother, no eye to
eye contact, no opportunity for the infant to touch the mother’s face,
to place his fingers in his mouth apparently existed during the experimental
period. The question left unanswered is how many of these infant
boys would have responded with penile erections under their normal
nursing conditions. Some older infants in the Halverson experiment
thumped the nipple vigorously with the tongue and rolled it about in
the mouth in what Halverson regarded as purely playful activity, but
these things occurred only with bottle feeding; none of the breast fed
babies exhibited this reaction. Halverson concluded that so-called
pleasure sucking activities have little or no connection with penile
erection. Penile erection did occur during the observation period but
never during sucking at the breast. Instead, erection occurred when infants
encountered a difficult or irritating situation. Halverson was
inclined to interpret the erections as related to abdominal pressure,
for when thwarting was introduced (such as removing the nipple or giving
the infant a difficult nipple) the resulting movements were conspicuously
characterized by severe contractions of the abdominal walls.
While other motor patterns varied during the onset of penile erection,
marked abdominal pressure was always present. The fact that marked abdominal
pressure is probably the most effective stimulus for penile
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