RESULTS OF SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS IN CHILDREN THREE TO EIGHT YEARS OF AGE

More and more authorities on child development are accepting intimate and even sexual encounters as a normal part of the maturational process. No longer do we feel that early discovery of genital differences, child-child sex play, or even a single occurrence of sexual molestation will have lasting ill effects on a child in a stable pattern of family-community experiences. Healthy children are not as easily upset by sexual experiences as some theorists would have us believe. Feeling the genitals of another child, getting a glimpse of the parent undressed, or a look at a “girly” magazine does not seriously disturb the average child.

There is no one reaction, for instance, to the discovery of genital differences of the sexes. Children generally accept the differences between the sexes with composure though some have a feeling of strangeness, surprise, curiosity, disappointment, or humor. There are children who are somewhat disturbed; they feel that something is “wrong” with what they have seen, something that should not be. Acceptance is mingled with the feeling that reality has somehow not come up to expectations. Some boys, thinking in terms of the external genitalia in the male and their absence in the female, assume that girls have lost an existing penis. Some girls also think that “something is wrong” with what they see.

Young people today generally recall their childhood sexual encounters, including their sex education, as having been almost totally inadequate in preparing them for experiences with the opposite sex during adolescence and adulthood. If the child received any formal sex education from parents or from the school, it usually consisted of a certain amount of cautious information about anatomy and the mechanisms of reproduction. It is too early to say if the programs of sex education for children being introduced in the schools today are effective.

Parents who go to great effort to protect their child from the normal intimate, sexual experiences of childhood may unconsciously do the very things that are designed to defeat their purposes. Frustration or the withholding of positive reinforcement of intimacy needs may result in an increase rather than a decrease in the motivation to satisfy such needs. It is a moot question. Is it the repressive rather than the permissive parents who contribute most to the high level of interest in sex and the high sexual-erotic content of our culture? Those who support the repressive sexual socialization of children do so largely out of fear that children will misbehave sexually if sensory, affectional, and sexual appetites are not repressed from infancy. It is true also that the clinical literature provides ample evidence of unwise or disturbed parents who willingly or unwillingly encourage and reinforce deviant and antisocial sexual behavior in their offspring. It is true also that because of varying types of upbringing, individuals differ in the extent to which they are able through self-restraint to tolerate delay of reward. The child learns whether taught or not. If not presented with models, he or she will find models. Attempts to postpone sexual socialization will only be partially successful and the models chosen could be less than adequate. Given the nature of human personality, the socialization process will continue in some manner or other from birth to maturity. One can conclude from Broderick’s research on intimacy patterns of children that intimate associations and attachments at all ages in infancy and childhood are necessary to sensory, affectional, and sexual maturity.

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