Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

der standing the sexual structure and function, true communication cannot
take place. The child senses that the parent has strong attitudes
about sex. But he does not know what it is that the parent feels
strongly about or why he feels that way.
One might ask, if a parent feels unable to give correct information,
are there types of misinformation that are less damaging to the
child than others?! I submit that there are. Innocuous misinformation
given rationally is apt to have less negative effect on the child than
if the parent handles the situation by going “into a rage.”
I was over at a friend’s house and she and I were
examining the contents of her dad’s dresser
drawer. I remember her pulling out condoms, however,
we thought they were balloons. We took them
outside and proceeded to blow them up. Her mother
came home and went into a rage. She told us they
were naughty and that we should never play with
such things again. As we were really scared, we
told her that some kids had given them to us. Out
of curiosity, we looked in all the drawers at my
house. Again, eventually finding our so-called
balloons in my dad’s drawer. This time we were
caught filling them up with water. My mother simply
explained that as I had some special possessions
that I didn’t want people to touch, so did
everyone else and that this was one of my dad’s.
When asked what it was used for, we were told
that it was used by dads in their work.
Generally speaking the schools have been no better than the parents
when it comes to sex education. Ambiguity, misinformation, mislabeling
and excessive idealism often characterize sex instruction in the
schools as well as at home. For example, a school principle told me
that his school felt that it was being very progressive and was doing
the right thing when they told children that every child born is the
result of an act of love on the part of the parents. In this case, some
progressive parents called in as consultants on the school’s sex education
curriculum objected to such instruction, pointing out that such
instruction was too idealistic. Not every child is the fruition of an
act of love. In this case, the parents wanted the school to tell the
truth!
Sex Questions Children Ask of Parents
If the home atmosphere is sexually repressive, the children do not
ask many sex-related questions. Conn (1948) reports that twenty-nine
percent of 128 boys and thirty percent of 72 girls in one of his studies
had inquired about sexual topics. As a group, the more intelligent
children offered more questions per child. But even in the superior
group (I.Q. 111-140) the average number of sex inquiries did not rise
above two questions for each child. The children (four to six years of
age) used such information as they had received at home, and combining
this information with their limited experiences, were able to produce
naive explanations as to where babies come from, for instance. The
child of this age thinks of “being born” in such terms as: “the baby is
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