Sociologists have had much to say about adolescent and adult sexuality
in the past, but have given very little attention to infant,
child, and preadolescent sexuality. This book brings together what is
known to date in the sociology of the sexuality of the young. We begin
with the sociology of infant sexuality.
The human infant-here defined as being between the ages from birth
up to but not including three years of age-is a creature of potential.
The development of that potential, whether related to mental,
physical, or sexual-erotic aspects of growth, occurs at a very rapid
rate during the first two years of life.
Actually the sensing mechanism
is at work much earlier than that-by about the eighth week of
gestation. (Liley, 1972). Until recently the human fetus in situ was
not accessible to study.
It was thought that quickening (when the fetus
begins moving limbs and trunk) did not take place until the sixteenth
to twentieth week of gestation.
Fetal movement is necessary to
the development of bones and joints, but the fetus apparently also
moves for the sensual reason of making itself more comfortable in the
uterus.
The fetus is responsive to pressure and touch-tickling the
scalp and stroking the palm, for instance, elicit reactions. In fact,
the areas from which a cutaneous reflex may be obtained are very generalized
in the fetus. (Langworthy, 1933). It is possible that the fetus
is also experienced in sucking before birth. It is not uncommon to detect
the fetus sucking thumbs, fingers, or toes. We can conclude that
at least habituation and perhaps even some sensate learning can take
place during the gestation period.
That sensate learning is possible before or outside of the achievement
of self-awareness is at least tangentially supported also in studies
of infant "socialization" among other mammals. Harlow's report
(Harlow and Zimmerman, 1959; Harlow, 1962) on affectional patterns of
rhesus monkeys deprived of interaction with a mother figure is a case
in point. Being deprived of the learning situation provided in normal
dependency-affectional and sexual behavior patterns as the monkeys grew
older.
The human infant, a pliable but non-ambulatory bundle of soft
and spongy bony tissue with a resultant uncanny ability to achieve unusual
postures both prenatally as well as after birth, can only interact
with people as they come to him. At a rapid rate, however, the
infant develops the capacity to locomote, thereby facilitating the development
of the ability to be the initiator of encounters with others.
The newborn's whole body of impulse and potential can be viewed as
an undifferentiated potential for physical and emotional and social experience.
(Comfort, 1963).
Sexual-erotic development, as all development, takes place at different
rates and in different ways in different individuals; development
in the affectional-sexual-erotic area is not separable from
development in other areas.
As an infant develops, every aspect of his
life experience is capable of affecting every other part. This is markedly
evident in the case of the infant whose motor development has progressed
to the stage where he no longer must await, but can actively
seek encounters with others, whether they be an infant running to hug
daddy hello or an infant opening his arms as an indication of his desire
to be held.