Early childhood years witness a marked intensification of sexual interest and capacity for erotic response. Erotic awakening is of two kinds, autoerotic and socio-sexual or interpersonal-erotic. Autoerotic stimulation in the form of masturbation is frequently observed in childhood and can be initiated by self-discovery or learned from peers or older children. Childhood is a time of acquiring facts about sexuality and children are interested in their own sexuality, the sexuality of their parents, and subjects relating to birth, the arrival of new babies, and other family matters. Sexual and erotic encounters in early childhood involve encounters with peers, siblings, other relatives or neighbors. "Doctor" and "show it" games are types of sex play, and romances and romantic relationships also occur. Often both heterosexual and homosexual encounters are interspersed in early childhood. Homosexual encounters usually involve handling of the genitals of a person of the same sex, although such things as oral- genital contact may also occur.
Children are also involved in sexual encounters with preadolescents
and adolescents. Here the older often teach the younger. These
relationships can take either heterosexual or homosexual forms. And although
the encounters can and do involve overt sexual activity, they
also involve informal verbal sex education without physical contact.
Child-parental sexual encounters begin with the child's observation
of his parents' sexuality. While in some societies children are
confronted with frequent displays of parental sexuality, in the United
States children are generally sheltered from such observations. Sexual
and erotic attachment between parents and even parental nudity are
sometimes kept hidden from the child.
The general taboo on sensory-affectional relations between child
and parent greatly minimizes the amount of intimacy learning that the
child receives in the home. And although there is limited evidence that
some change is taking place in the direction of more sensory-affectional
contact in the home, it is too early to speculate on the effects
of such change.
Another aspect of child-parental sexual encounters manifests itself
when the parent observes the sexual encounters between a child and
a peer. Prevailing adult attitudes filter through to the child in the
way the parent handles the situation, as well as through other parental
reactions to sexual activity. In sexual situations parental reactions
in the United States are commonly unambiguous if the parents'
responses are negative. And unfortunately, unlike other negative injunctions,
the ones referring to sexual behavior are seldom retracted,
even at much later dates or as applying to very different sensory-affectional
situations.
The phenomenon of non-labeling or mislabeling the sex organs and
their functions, practiced by many parents, also inhibits true communication
between child and parent in the area of sexuality.
Thus, the
child's sex questions are few and usually poorly answered.
Adults other than parents can also be involved in sexual encounters
with children.
Their roles vary from mild verbal references to sex
or sex matters to violent and aggressive child molestation. The unwritten
rule that discipline of a child is the responsibility of the
child's own parents often keeps other adults from extreme interference
in the sexual socialization of another parent's child-even when the
adult views that child in what he may believe to be an improper sex
act.
Sexual-erotic activity that involves adults and children is generally
condemned in the United States. Exhibitionism, incest, and pedophilia
are especially proscribed.
The results of and responses to sensory-affectional encounters in
early childhood vary with the individual. However, such encounters are
becoming more and more accepted as part of the normal maturational process,
something with which children can adequately deal and from which
they suffer no lasting ill effects. Yet young people today generally
recall their childhood sensory-affectional encounters, including their
sex education, as having been almost totally inadequate in preparing
them for experiences with the opposite sex during adolescence and
adulthood. The elements of secrecy, repression, anxiety, and isolated
negative encounters with adults create socio-sexual attitudes as do the
more positive experiences. And whatever pattern of sexual life is developed
early in childhood, it is regulative and difficult to change in
later life. The roots of sexual behavior are established early in life
and intimate associations and attachments at all ages in infancy and
childhood are necessary to sensory, affectional, and sexual maturity.