The Child as Audience and Parents as Sex Actors and Sex Models
Before dealing with encounters involving child-parent interaction
around the subject of sex, it is well to consider what the child has
learned from observing his parents.
There are societies, and the United States is not one of them, in
which no effort or only limited effort is made to conceal parental sexual
encounters from children.
Among the Melanesian Islanders where a
certain amount of parental privacy is considered desirable, if a child
becomes too curious and bold it is told to mind its own business and is
instructed not to look. (Brecher and Brecher, 1966, p. 188).
But among
the Alorese, by the age of five children are informed on details of the
reproductive act. Members of the Pukapukan household sleep in the same
room and although parents may wait until the children are asleep, there
are opportunities for youngsters to observe adult sexual activity and
sexual matters are talked about.
Lesu children are free to observe
adult coitus with the exception that they are not to watch their own
mothers having coitus. On Ponape children are given instruction in coitus
from the fourth or fifth year.
Trukese children receive no formal
education but they learn by watching adults at night and by asking
their elders about sexual matters. (Ford and Beach, 1951, p. 188-189).
A high proportion of adults in the United States (the Kinsey sample)
rather precisely recalled the age at which they had first seen the
genitalia of the opposite sex.
This, according to Kinsey, emphasizes
the importance which such experience has for the child in a culture
that has gone to such lengths to conceal the anatomic differences between
the sexes.
In searching for some characteristic trait that would
distinguish the non-marital sexual behavior in primitive societies from
other societies, Maxwell (1967) looked to differences in the structure
of dwellings.
He based his work on the thesis that restrictions placed
upon contact-the maintenance of social distance-provide a way in
which awe can be generated and sustained.
He assumed that sex was most
likely to be private in societies where houses had substantial walls
that could not be seen through.
On the other hand, attitudes toward sex
would likely be more casual if people lived in houses made of lattice
work or grass or if the houses had no walls.
Maxwell made a cross-culture
check of his theory having adequate information on wall material
and norms of premarital sex behavior for ninety-three societies. The
data supported the hypothesis. The more opaque the walls, the stricter
the sex norms. Homes in the United States overwhelmingly have opaque
walls.
Awe and trauma can occur for the child if he has been sheltered and
is suddenly exposed to an unusual adult genital-related experience
without receiving an adequate explanation of the behavior, as the following
case.
I was intrigued with my mother's physical differences.
The most puzzling childhood experience
I had involved her menstruation. I awoke
one night to see my father carrying my mother,
who had hemorrhaged to such an extent that her
nightgown was soaked with blood.
This terrified
and mystified me, not only that night but for
some time afterwards.
I was so shocked by her
appearance that I thought something terrible had
happened to her. There again, no attempt was
made on my parents' part to explain this normal
biological occurrence.
The experience happened
to me when I was no more than four years old,
yet I vividly recall the emotional reactions
which took place in my mind.