Four of the communities were in the Upper Midwest-two rural, one inner city, and one suburban. The other two communities were in the urban industrial Northeast-one an urban residential area and the other an outlying community. I have also read and incorporated data from Alfred Kinsey's interview notes on a sample of children two to five years of age, data which have not been previously published. Permission to utilize these data was granted by the Institute for Sex Research (the Kinsey Institute), Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Recall of sexual encounters is possible from about age three. For
earlier ages one cannot rely at all on subjective data as such. One
must utilize the observations of mothers, researchers, and others who
have been particularly close to the infant and young child. Among others,
Larry and Joan Constantine have graciously offered me the use of
data on a small number of child sexual experiences that they gathered
incidental to their study of multilateral marriages.
The study is exploratory. The sample population is not representative
of any one clearly defined universe. The majority of persons supplying
sex histories are youthful, high school educated, middle-class,
white, Protestant, and from the Upper Midwest. The study makes no
attempt to record the incidence of various kinds of sexual encounters,
since we have no clearly defined and meaningful universe. We are here
concerned with the quality, not the quantity of the affectional-sexual
encounters of the young in terms of what it is like and how it feels
for children to be participants in such encounters.
The book is divided into three major sections. The first deals with
affectional-sexual encounters of infants from birth to three years of
age. The second deals with the encounters of children three through
seven years of age. The third section deals with preadolescents from
eight to twelve years of age.
Hopefully, this study will be of value to students of human sexuality,
primary, secondary, and college teachers, counsellors of the
young, parents, as well as to young people and the general reader.
This book is privately published. Twenty-nine publishers were
offered the privilege of publishing it. All thought that it should be
published, but each thought that some other publisher should have the
privilege!
Many persons played significant though varied roles in the research
and writing that led to the final publication of the manuscript. I
would like especially to recognize the contributions of Paul H. Gebhard,
Julie Ann Lindahl, Beatrice Awes Martinson, and Edwin J. Nichols.
F.M.M.
Center for Studies of
Child and Family Mental Health
National Institute of Mental Health
Rockville, Maryland
May 15, 1973