Rather than passing through a set series of sexual stages determined by physical growth, children develop at different rates and in a wide variety of directions depending upon how they are raised. In some communities they may go through the classic series of stages in attitude toward the opposite sex; pre-school friendships, elementary school dislikes, followed by junior high school awakening and high school attraction and involvement.
In other communities, perhaps only a few
miles away, the series of stages may be quite different. Broderick
found communities in the United States in which there were well-established
romances going on in the kindergarten class and a great deal of
giggling and gossiping over couples.
Among these five year olds, who-
is-going-to-marry-whom was a common subject of conversation. By eight
and nine years of age children played kissing games at their parties.
By ages ten and eleven nearly half had begun to date and most had a series
of crushes on adults and other children.
Ninety per cent of the
fifth grade boys in one community were involved in what Broderick referred
to as "special" relationships with girlfriends.
In another community
the crowning social event of the year was the class dance, a
"date" affair in which a Queen and King of the fifth grade were chosen.
(Broderick, 1966).
Anthropologists have complained for years that both the hormone and
the psychoanalytic theories failed to account for the sexual activities
of young children in certain primitive societies.
United States
data has shown that romantic interest in the opposite sex begin in infancy
or early childhood, depending on the degree of permissiveness and
stimulation in the social environment.
This is not to deny the marked
impact of puberty upon sexual attitudes and experiences.
Psychoanalytic theory of sexual development has had more emphasis
in the human sexuality literature than it deserves, particularly in the
literature on infant and child sexuality. This is so, first of all, be
cause psychoanalytic theory, though grand, mystical, and rich in insights,
has not produced many empirically verifiable hypotheses. For
experts in child behavior to use unverified pyschoanalytic insights as
fact is unbecoming and potentially dangerous to those who depend on
their counsel.
Secondly, psychoanalytic theory has drawn what empirical
support it has largely from observations of small samples of clinical
populations rather than from broad representative samples. In other
words, samples of children and adults who are ill, children and adults
who have been brought to a therapist or clinic because of some behavior
problem have provided the major source of samples in the past. Psychoanalytic
theory, though inadequately tested, has been utilized as a
source and justification for after the fact causal explanations of various
manifestations of sexual behavior.
What we need is not the abandonment of psychoanalytic theory, however.
Psychoanalytic theorists must continue to derive and test hypotheses
using psychoanalytic concepts.
But what is needed more is that
other behavioral scientists with other theoretical and conceptual orientations,
including sociologists, do more to test social theories of
sexual development using large (rather than small), representative
(rather than clinical) populations.
It is well known and generally accepted
that any aspect of human behavior, including sexual behavior,
benefits from study and research using alternative theoretical frameworks.