Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

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Infants deprived of touch--holding, caressing, fondling--exhibit more than their share of violent-aggressive behavior and social-emotional disorders in later years. (Prescott, September 8, 1970). The reasonableness of this hypothesis has been supported in a number of animal studies of deprivation, notably studies of isolation-reared rhesus monkeys. When isolation-reared monkeys are brought together the first act of touching becomes a stimulus for violent-aggressive behavior. Dominant social characteristics of deprived animals include, besides violent-aggressive behavior, self-destructive biting and attacks on infant offspring. “Touching which is normally pleasurable and comforting becomes aversive, stressful, distasteful, and apparently painful.” (Prescott and McKay, April 1972, p. 2). If this is true of animals, Prescott and McKay (February 1973) suggest that something similar might also be true of children. They reason that human societies which are characterized by enrichment or impoverishment of the stimulation that comes from touch during the formative years of development would result in predominantly peaceful or violent adult behavior. In an ingenious, though at best partial, test of the hypothesis, Prescott and McKay examined published data on fortynine societies. It was assumed that high physical intimate affection would be predictive of permissive and tolerant sexual behavior in adulthood and that low physical intimate affection would be predictive of punitive and repressive sexual behavior in adulthood. The data, however, did not indicate a significant relationship between early infant affection and later permissive sexuality. Prescott and McKay returned to the data and asked if it could be possible that deprivation of affection imposed during the later formative period (denial of the right to premarital intercourse, for example) contributes to high adult violence despite the presence of high infant affection. An examination of seven societies that did not provide a high level of infant affection and yet had a record of low adult violence all were characterized by freely permitted premarital sexual behavior. Prescott and McKay suggest that the effects of early affectional deprivation might be compensated for by adolescent affectional permissiveness. According to Prescott and McKay, premarital sexual relations may constitute an effective prophylactic against later destructive and violent interpersonal behavior. When both early (infant) and later (adolescent) affectional permissiveness or the lack of it were considered together, it was possible to accurately predict adult interpersonal behavior in forty-seven of the forty-nine societies studied. Prescott and McKay conclude that this data offers some compelling validation for the effects of affectional enrichment or deprivation on human behavior and indicates that a two-stage developmental theory of affectional stimulation, the first in infancy and the second in adolescence, is necessary to accurately account for the development and expression of peaceful or destructive-violent interpersonal behavior in adulthood. Affectional-sexual development, in comparison with other aspects of development--motor and language, for example--has been more often repressed than encouraged in the majority of families in the United States and throughout most of the western world. A traditional taboo surrounds the subject of infant sexuality despite the fact that healthy human offspring are endowed from birth with sensory and affectional impulses. In the United States sex is seldom treated as a strong and 22
healthy force in the positive development of personality. (Ribble, 1955). Infant sexual behavior, in the eyes of many, is negative, perverse, and destructive. Some see infant sexual-affectional potential as related to excesses--addictions that control the individual and weaken his reason. That infants have erotic capacity has been pointedly ignored or overlooked. After an asexual infancy and childhood, sex is supposed to burst out full bloom at puberty or, hopefully, later. Sexual innocence has been assumed to be the normal and appropriate infant posture. Still earlier, infants were considered as depraved if they masturbated, asked sex-related questions, or showed any sexual interest or curiosity. Ignorance was and is deemed best to keep dormant any precocious sexual feelings. It has been taken for granted that other aspects of physical and mental growth would proceed in a gradual way from birth to full maturity, but knowledge about sexual capacity and interest has been either consciously or unconsciously suppressed even in the community of social and behavioral scientists. This is an enigma, for as early as the turn of the century Bell (1902), Freud (1905), and Moll (1909) were reporting that in infants of suckling age various parts of the body could give pleasurable sensation and romances did develop in childhood, and it was known that “unscrupulous nurses” had found that they could calm crying babies by stroking their genitals. Freud observed that sexual behavior of the infant and child not only was ignored but “the educators consider all sexual manifestations of the child as an ‘evil’ in the face of which little can be accomplished.” (Freud, 1962, p. 41). To find sexuality suppressed in the schools is perhaps understandable; to find it largely overlooked in behavioral and social science is more difficult to understand and to accept. What would be the outcome of a concerted effort to give infants the opportunity to fully develop their capacity for sensory and affectional response? We do not know because we have not apparently wanted to know. Those who argue that the individual, to be fully human, must have the opportunities to develop all his capacities argue that this principle should apply to his sexual capacity as well as to the capacity of his intellect and motor skills. Those who argue for discipline, self control, and the curbing of harmful or socially disruptive human tendencies, argue that only the minimum of stimulation and no erotic experience should characterize the personal encounters of infants. Those who opt for restriction of erotic expression in infancy and childhood are in the majority in the United States at the present time. In a recent survey of sex attitudes, for instance, 90 percent of the general public judged sexual activities between an adult and a child to be “always wrong.” (Levitt and Klassen, 1973). Of one thing we are certain, empirical behavioral and social science, given the present state of theory, research and accumulated findings on infant sexuality, is in no position to give definitive counsel to parents, to the school, or to society in general. Is it even correct to speak of infant sexuality? That depends in part upon our definition of sexuality. If by the term sexuality we mean the possession of the biological and psychic response system that can and does respond to stimulation by self and others and that induces infants to seek and even to initiate intimate, affectional encounters with others, the answer has to be yes. If, on the other hand, one uses the term sexuality to refer to sexual expression that is “a deep and 23
Page 1 and 2: INFANT AND CHILD SEXUALITY A Sociol
Page 3: About the Author Ph.D., Sociology,
Page 6 and 7: PREFACE We know very little about s
Page 8 and 9: Many persons played significant tho
Page 10 and 11: in infancy and childhood in hormone
Page 12 and 13: cause psychoanalytic theory, though
Page 14 and 15: and differentiating adults by such
Page 16 and 17: questions about his penis. He watch
Page 18 and 19: (Korner, 1973). The male infant has
Page 20 and 21: milk. Breast feeding is significant
Page 22 and 23: infant. Not only the amount but als
Page 24 and 25: According to the middle class stand
Page 26 and 27: myths about this practice. The Chil
Page 28 and 29: three hundred (one percent of the f
Page 32 and 33: pervasive aspect of one’s total p
Page 34 and 35: The mother of a five year old told
Page 36 and 37: ate count as to the number who do,
Page 38 and 39: een aware that autoeroticism--eroti
Page 40 and 41: had erections when playing with gir
Page 42 and 43: they will eventually select their m
Page 44 and 45: and I can remember being scolded nu
Page 46 and 47: the arousal, but I was aroused. Chi
Page 48 and 49: was more inquisitive than sexual. B
Page 50 and 51: In both of the following cases, as
Page 52 and 53: emember to this day the nauseated f
Page 54 and 55: I remember one scene very well. He
Page 56 and 57: and he’d done it! The only penis
Page 58 and 59: of dwellings. He based his work on
Page 60 and 61: ents. Bandura and Walters conclude
Page 62 and 63: 1965, p. 225). Children often contr
Page 64 and 65: shocked, told me not to do it anymo
Page 66 and 67: all children who are told to get
Page 68 and 69: cide that the child is “not old e
Page 70 and 71: little”; “they grow out of the
Page 72 and 73: that there was a “place in mommy
Page 74 and 75: tivity, and especially that which i
Page 76 and 77: His next approach was to tell me ab
Page 78 and 79: My father when undressed was a sour
Page 80 and 81:
In other words, I was to avoid him,
Page 82 and 83:
The general taboo on sensory-affect
Page 84 and 85:
held by the eight year old. An inte
Page 86 and 87:
asked each boy to rate his response
Page 88 and 89:
It was not until high school that I
Page 90 and 91:
fondling between the ages of eleven
Page 92 and 93:
invited on an individual basis. Oft
Page 94 and 95:
parents didn’t allow me to go any
Page 96 and 97:
me. I repeatedly told her that I wa
Page 98 and 99:
grade girl) was so embarrassed and
Page 100 and 101:
societies that are considerably mor
Page 102 and 103:
attempts at fellatio. Other cases i
Page 104 and 105:
it. I felt a tingling all over my b
Page 106 and 107:
me to look at a cunt as soon as pos
Page 108 and 109:
Sex Instructions fondle me and inve
Page 110 and 111:
ing. This pattern continued on to j
Page 112 and 113:
long as I had started it, I could r
Page 114 and 115:
As far back as I can remember my pa
Page 116 and 117:
mal sex education from my father du
Page 118 and 119:
with their immediate descendants. T
Page 120 and 121:
fully initiated but not yet married
Page 122 and 123:
nificance in the presence of childr
Page 124 and 125:
sexuality nor for the quality of se
Page 126 and 127:
Literature One indirect method util
Page 128 and 129:
love, sex, and the opposite sex. Th
Page 130 and 131:
year olds in Elmtown about 15 perce
Page 132 and 133:
ing attitudes, conversations, and a
Page 134 and 135:
Outcomes of Preadolescent Sexual En
Page 136 and 137:
Positive in love romantic really li
Page 138 and 139:
anticipation, and satisfaction. Wha
Page 140 and 141:
IV. A FEW WORDS OF MY OWN It is goo
Page 142 and 143:
BIBLIOGRAPHY Abelson, H., Cohen, R.
Page 144 and 145:
Crist, John R., “High School Dati
Page 146 and 147:
Ketcher, Allan, “The Discriminati
Page 148 and 149:
Newton, Niles and Michael Newton,
Page 150 and 151:
Woody, Jane Divita, “Contemporary
Page 152 and 153:
INDEX Ford, Clellan S., 8, 15, 49,
Page 154:
INDEX in early childhood with adult
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