Infant and Child Sexuality: A Sociological Perspective - Ipce

personal event as peers take note of this phenomenon and the individual
is made to feel the approval or disapproval of the group.
I was a little wary of this (the appearance of
pubic hair) myself. Those who grew pubic hair
early were teased, but at the same time there
was a feeling of jealousy on the part of the
others. I was about average and accepted it as a
symbol of masculinity.
A friend and I or even a group of us would sit
around and compare penises. During most of these
comparisons, we would experience erections,
which we thought was funny. We watched to see if
our hairs had started to grow. For several weeks
we watched closely (once in a while checking
with a magnifying glass). Finally the big day
came for me. I was so proud and excited that I
showed many of my friends and even my sister who
was just a year younger than I was. It wasn’t
too long after my pubic hair growing incident
and after many attempts to reach climax, that I
finally succeeded to climax. Again this was a
proud and very important thing in my life at
that time.
Why does the group sometimes react with teasing? It is partly because
the appearance of pubic hair is a new phenomenon that must be
recognized. Yet, knowing what we do about the quality of sex information
of youth in the United States, the group members are not sure what
the proper reaction should be. Teasing may well be a good compromise.
It recognizes the phenomenon without clearly designating its meaning or
importance.
The preadolescent boy begins to exchange his sexual information
with others by age eight or nine if he has not done so earlier. There
is “hunger for knowledge” at this age. Many boys of this age are not so
lucky as to find helpful literature readily available.
Just before puberty I (a boy) had a hunger for
knowledge. I read all the sex literature I could
get my hands on. This literature was sexually
arousing in the true sense of the word, and I
would become quite stimulated. I began having
frequent erections and found new pleasure associated
with the genitals.
Erection comes on much more quickly in preadolescent boys than in
adults though the speed in which climax is reached in preadolescent
males varies considerably in different boys as it does in adult males.
In preadolescents, the capacity to achieve repeated orgasms in limited
periods of time exceeds the capacity of teenage boys, who in turn are
more capable than are men. (Kinsey, 1948, p. 178-179).
Ramsey (1943), in studying the erotic responsiveness of nearly 300
boys from an urban junior high school in a middle-sized Midwestern city
(the respondents were mostly white, middle-class, and Protestant),
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