Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

The general taboo on sensory-affectional relations between child
and parent greatly minimizes the amount of intimacy learning that the
child receives in the home. And although there is limited evidence that
some change is taking place in the direction of more sensory-affectional
contact in the home, it is too early to speculate on the effects
of such change.
Another aspect of child-parental sexual encounters manifests itself
when the parent observes the sexual encounters between a child and
a peer. Prevailing adult attitudes filter through to the child in the
way the parent handles the situation, as well as through other parental
reactions to sexual activity. In sexual situations parental reactions
in the United States are commonly unambiguous if the parents’
responses are negative. And unfortunately, unlike other negative injunctions,
the ones referring to sexual behavior are seldom retracted,
even at much later dates or as applying to very different sensory-affectional
situations.
The phenomenon of non-labeling or mislabeling the sex organs and
their functions, practiced by many parents, also inhibits true communication
between child and parent in the area of sexuality. Thus, the
child’s sex questions are few and usually poorly answered.
Adults other than parents can also be involved in sexual encounters
with children. Their roles vary from mild verbal references to sex
or sex matters to violent and aggressive child molestation. The unwritten
rule that discipline of a child is the responsibility of the
child’s own parents often keeps other adults from extreme interference
in the sexual socialization of another parent’s child--even when the
adult views that child in what he may believe to be an improper sex
act. Sexual-erotic activity that involves adults and children is generally
condemned in the United States. Exhibitionism, incest, and pedophilia
are especially proscribed.
The results of and responses to sensory-affectional encounters in
early childhood vary with the individual. However, such encounters are
becoming more and more accepted as part of the normal maturational process,
something with which children can adequately deal and from which
they suffer no lasting ill effects. Yet young people today generally
recall their childhood sensory-affectional encounters, including their
sex education, as having been almost totally inadequate in preparing
them for experiences with the opposite sex during adolescence and
adulthood. The elements of secrecy, repression, anxiety, and isolated
negative encounters with adults create socio-sexual attitudes as do the
more positive experiences. And whatever pattern of sexual life is developed
early in childhood, it is regulative and difficult to change in
later life. The roots of sexual behavior are established early in life
and intimate associations and attachments at all ages in infancy and
childhood are necessary to sensory, affectional, and sexual maturity.
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