Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

had erections when playing with girls. He would deliberately undress
with a playmate, would occasionally cuddle, and would encourage the
girl to stay overnight. He also cuddled a preadolescent girl. Kinsey
reported that the boy ran around the house in the nude while the sex
history was being taken. (Kinsey, unpublished).
Besides direct erotic encounters with peers, the concrete events
and situations which stimulate the growth of sexual curiosity and aid
in sexual awakening of the infant or child are numerous. Among events
which serve to stimulate the child to explore himself and his environment
directly or indirectly by means of questions, imitation, or otherwise
are such incidences as: the presence of a puppy in the home; the
seeing of a litter of kittens for the first time; seeing members of the
family in the nude; noticing the differences in bodily characteristics
in men and women; seeing the changes that occur in a pregnant woman;
the presence of a new baby; a chance bit of information concerning the
coming of babies or other sexual events which are overheard in the family
or mentioned in discussions with other children.
The bodies of the opposite sex challenged imagination.
The breasts of mature women always seemed to
puzzle me. I realized early that fleshy breasts
were characteristic of females, but yet I noticed
that both boys and girls had nipples.
Despite such apparent sexual precocity in children, little children
(three to four) have some difficulty learning that there are genital
differences between the sexes. They do not appear to form clear
general concepts of genital differences until ages five to seven. Utilizing
a sample of children who were largely from the lower socio-economic
level and whose parents indicated that many of the children had
not been told about basic anatomical differences, Conn (1940), and Conn
and Kanner (1947), were able to elicit knowledge of genital differences
from only fifty percent of children age four to six years, and
from seventy-two percent of children age seven to eight. Among children
of parents with more formal education, Butler (1952) found a similar
degree of ignorance among children of four to five years of age.
Although fifteen of seventeen children had been informed by their parents
of anatomical differences, Butler was able to elicit awareness of
genital differences from but five of the fifteen children. Ketcher
(1955) found in a study of 266 three to nine year olds that children
most easily make sex differentiations based on the clothing worn by
each sex, followed by differentiation based on hair styles, and lastly
by observing differences in genitalia and breasts. Age seemed to be the
most important factor in ability to differentiate between the sexes,
with younger girls excelling younger boys in this regard. Children report
that before first witnessing they have taken for granted that the
genitals of all people are alike. The discovery of the differences can
be a disappointment as reported in the following two cases.
I was six. She was five. I knew what the genitals
of males looked like, but what about
females? I was determined to find out. (They
disrobed while playing the roles of mommy and
daddy in a game of “house.”)
I was shocked to see she didn’t have anything
between her legs, except what appeared to
32