There is probably no human activity about which there is greater
curiosity, greater social concern, and less knowledge than sexuality,
particularly infant and child sexuality.
If we ever hope to understand
infant and child sexuality we must improve on the theoretical and conceptual
base, develop testable hypotheses from the different theoretical
systems, and carry out the designated research.
We especially need
theoretical alternatives to the psychoanalytic theory of infant and
child sexuality.
We have too long been complacent about leaving the explanation
of sexuality of the young to psychoanalysis.
Freud (1915) had
no intention that it should be so. He insisted that his conclusions
were based on psychoanalytic investigations alone and that these needed
to be amplified by studies in other spheres, including sociology.
Freud
himself turned to a sociology of sex in his later years when he gave
much attention to the opposition between civilization and the freedom
of sexual expression. (Jones, 1955).
There are currently several theories as to how and when human beings
develop sexually and arrive at patterns of sexual behavior.
From a
physiological point of view, it has been said that preadolescent boys
and girls do not desire each other sexually because certain glands are
not functioning.
The testes, for example, after a period of activity
prenatally, enter a period of hormonal quiescence until the onset of
puberty. (Money, 1973).
At puberty, when the glands secrete their hormones,
boys and girls awaken sexually and have an urge to engage in
sexual activities.
Hence, it is because of social restraints that they
do not indulge in sexual license. (Udry, 1966, p. 104). According to
the hormone theory sexual inadequacy, frigidity, and impotence are the
result of too few sex hormones, too many, or the wrong kind. (Broderick,
June 1964).
Hence, most persons develop this sex urge at puberty
but some develop it abnormally early and some develop it abnormally
late or not at all.
According to psychoanalytic theory, the libido, the basic life
force, is present from birth, and even the infant has sex needs which
are met in sucking, elimination, or manipulating the sex organs. The
ages seven to eleven are seen as a period of relatively decreased intensity
of the biological drive and are referred to as latency.
Relieved
from the internal stress and conflict occasioned by the severe
internal pressure of the drive, the latency child supposedly busies
himself with learning about the outer world.
The vivid fantasy life and
creativity of childhood is replaced by fact-finding, collecting, the
acquisition of skills, memorization, et cetera. The period from eleven
to thirteen years of age is seen as one of relative peace. But it is
short-lived; indeed it may not in some cases be distinguishable at all.
Preadolescence then anticipates the onrush of intensified sexual drive
for the second time-the first time being during infancy, the second
being at puberty.
The emphasis on latency as well as general disregard of sexuality
in infancy and childhood in hormone theory has brought both the hormone
theory and psychoanalytic theory into question by sociologists in
recent years.
Anthropologists had earlier questioned latency theory because
of the sexual activity observed among children in permissive
primitive societies.