If the home atmosphere is sexually repressive, the children do not ask many sex-related questions. Conn (1948) reports that twenty-nine percent of 128 boys and thirty percent of 72 girls in one of his studies had inquired about sexual topics. As a group, the more intelligent children offered more questions per child. But even in the superior group (I.Q. 111-140) the average number of sex inquiries did not rise above two questions for each child. The children (four to six years of age) used such information as they had received at home, and combining this information with their limited experiences, were able to produce naive explanations as to where babies come from, for instance.
The child of this age thinks of "being born" in such terms as: "the baby is
little"; "they grow out of the ground"; "they grow and then they buy
them"; "the baby comes from the hospital"; "God put 'em in. God makes
'em." (Conn, 1948). Of twenty-five children of pre-school age (four to
six years of age), God was frequently referred to as the source of babies.
Children also spoke of babies as being bought from stores. In
about one-third of the cases they mentioned the hospital as a place
where babies are obtained. The idea of the doctor as the person who
brings the baby to the mother was introduced by only two children.
There was no reference to the mother's role in the coming of the baby,
and the concept of the birth process was foreign to these children of
1948 who are the parents of the 1970s. As we will see shortly, children
twenty years later were not giving better answers than were the
children in 1948.
When children under five do ask questions, they are asked in the
following order in terms of interest according to Hattendorf (1932);
origin of babies, physical sex differences, organs and functions, coming
of another baby, process of birth, relations of father to reproduction,
intra-uterine growth, and marriage.
It would appear from this
list that the parent generation that is doing an inadequate job of providing
sex information today was asking fairly sophisticated questions
in its own childhood. No doubt they weren't receiving answers either.
Even in a family where parents are permissive and relaxed, as in the
following encounter involving nudity, the child may meet with an ambiguous
response when he asks questions.
In one area of sex my parents were very open.
They didn't feel it was necessary to shield our
eyes from their bodies nor from the bodies of
anyone in our family. Thus, the physical
differences between the sexes was made very
apparent to me at that early age (four years
old).
One of the resultant experiences I can
distinctly remember, involved my father when he
was in the process of relieving himself. Having
seen myself and having completed not too long
before my own toilet training, I (a girl) was
curious to know why he was standing up, and what
it was he had between his legs. When I
questioned him about this though, I don't
remember exactly what he said, except that he
avoided the question, which left it to my
imagination to figure out.
There is a collection of art work done mostly by first and second
graders on the subject "Where was I before I was born?" or "What did I
look like before I was born?" with comments by many of the children on
their drawings that give insight into children's sex knowledge today.
(Miles, 1967). Teachers were asked to have the pupils answer these
questions with a painting. The response was enthusiastic. The pictures
and comments are revealing, for one can glimpse pictorially, the gaps
in a young child's sexual knowledge. There are gross misconceptions.
One child noted on his picture, "This is me when I was up in heaven and
God brought me down in my mommy's stomach." Many drew pictures of themselves
sitting up in the clouds and sky. Imagine these children interpreting
the poetic euphemism, "God sent you," as meaning that children
sit patiently in heaven waiting for God to magically insert them into
their mothers' "stomachs" to be born.