Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

her mother didn’t know what to do and then
decided to go along as long as her daughter
seemed okay. She put her hand on her daughter’s
genitals and suggested Alice put hers on top,
showing her mother how it felt best. Her daughter
started moving rhythmically and breathing
heavily, exactly as she had seen her mother do.
Her motion and breathing gradually built up to a
climax and she relaxed. Whether she actually
reached orgasm or mimicked it is uncertain. She
was happy and thanked her mother. (Constantine).
Barb, at five, appeared to be completely comfortable
being present when her parents made love.
Her parents were casual about sensual interactions
with their children. One day Barb asked,
“Dad, can I have a ‘love-in’ with you?” “Well,
maybe when you’re older, if you still want to we
can talk about it.” It was an honest reply, not a
put-off, and satisfied her. She continued to have
interest in erotic involvement with her father
with no apparent anxieties on the part of either
daughter or father. (Constantine).
The child’s first ideas about marriage are based upon what he observes
of his parents’ behavior and on the encounters he has with his
parents. He is aware that emotion and affection are or are not displayed,
that sharing does or does not take place, that thoughtfulness
and concern are or are not shown. Later on, he seeks to emulate or reject
their patterns of behavior. Most parents have something of a life
together of which the child is not a part. The child does not always
accept the fact that he is an outsider to some parental activity and
may have difficulty adjusting to it. In the following case, the secrecy
that the child felt cloaked his parents’ separation from him
added to his feeling of alienation.
I believe I was aware of it when I was about
five or six years old. That is when I became
aware of the fact my mother and father were
going out sometimes at night after I was supposed
to be asleep. My room was near the garage,
and the opening garage door made quite a racket.
It would awaken me, and I often would lie awake
until they returned late at night. I figured
that they were trying to keep this secret from
me by sneaking out while I was asleep. This made
me think they felt a little guilty about it, and
so I never brought it up, although I often cried
for hours while they were gone because the situation
disturbed me so.
Many parents who “go out” do not hide this fact from their children
but provide a surrogate parent in the person of a baby-sitter. On
the other hand, most children do not learn much about sexual behavior
even from parents who accept their own sexual activity and enjoy it because
of the parents’ desire for privacy, their ingenuity, and their
felt ‘need’ to keep sexuality secret from the child. (Gagnon, August
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