Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

tightly. It seemed to me that there was something
to be ashamed of in nudity of the human
male body. This was the only subject about which
my parents were unwilling to talk. We planned
and did everything together as a family. Their
hesitancy on this subject was very plain, however.
Given a framework of repression and avoidance by parents and other
adults and by adult-sponsored agencies, the child gets the bulk of his
sexual information, though not his attitudes, through peer relationships.
The parents do not provide cognitive information about sexuality
for the child, but they create attitudes and orientations through
which information from other children is filtered. (Gagnon, August
1965, p. 223).
There is not a great deal of variety in the sexual encounters
involving the child three to seven years old and his parents (usually
his mother), at least insofar as data on middle-class children is
concerned. The encounters are mostly symbolic (verbal) rather than
direct tactile encounters. Parent, usually mother, has the upper hand
and her response to sexual activity of her child is characterized by
negative injunctions, ambiguous responses, postponed responses, and
definitions of the situation in non-sexual terms whenever possible.
These patterns of parental response will be illustrated in the cases
that follow.
We turn first to some cases in which the role of the adult other
(usually the mother) is characterized by negative injunction and unambiguous
instruction coupled at times with other negative behavior. It
is important to bear in mind that these are encounters recalled from
childhood by the child, not by the parent. The parent might well have a
different recall of the encounter; but it does not matter--we want to
see how the event influenced the child, not the parent.
In the first case, the mother responds to a four year old’s masturbation
with harsh words which inspire some feeling of guilt but not
enough to interrupt the pattern of behavior.
I was about four years old at the time, and had
recently discovered masturbation. I was found
one day by my mother as she looked in at me during
my usual afternoon nap. I was lying naked on
the bed in the process of stimulation. I was not
physically punished but did receive a few harsh
words that inspired some degree of guilt in me.
I have continued masturbation. Masturbation was
a substantial part of my early life.
In the next case the mother’s reaction to a similar situation is
marked by negative affect (“she was shocked”), negative injunction
(“told me not to do it anymore”) and unambiguous behavior (“spanked
me”).
When I (a three or four year old boy who had
discovered the pleasant sensation of masturbation)
excitedly showed my mother, she was
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