There are social factors that may contribute to bridging the involvement
gap between boys and girls along with sexual-erotic precocity
which cannot be ruled out as a factor contributing to early
involvement.
Winick suggests that even the popular mannequin dolls that
little girls play with help to prepare the female child for early dating,
beginning with Betsy McCall in 1954 and culminating in the popular
Barbie in 1959.
Barbie is a sexy teenager, and playing with her
involves changing costumes and preparing for boy-girl dating relationships,
according to Winick. The rehearsal for dating provided by Barbie
and her imitators may accelerate the social development of their
owners.
The effect of sex dreams that I had paralleled the
feeling I received when a girl friend and I played
with the sexually mature Barbie doll. Curiosity of
the doll's body led to fondling of the doll's
breasts and produced an excited feeling.
By and large dolls sold in the United States are devoid of genitalia,
however, contributing to the asexual socialization of children.
A college student, on reading one of Broderick's articles on the
stages of heterosexual development, wrote the following which corroborates
the data that we have presented in this chapter, namely that not
only is preadolescence not a period of latency as has been surmised,
but also that boy-girl relationships are often quite sexual and erotic.
As I recall, this was a period of great experimentation,
exposure, and discussion of sex.
Elaborate games which we thought disguised our
motives quite well, were created in order that
we might expose ourselves in what seemed to us a
permissible manner.
The fourth grade was characterized
by serious boy-girl relationships in
which "making out" was a vital component. In the
fifth and sixth grade the boys my age were getting
their thrills, much to the horror of us
girls, by taking pictures of each other experiencing
an erection.
The longer I spend, recall
ing attitudes, conversations, and actions of the
six through twelve age group, which is supposedly
the latency period, the more convinced I am
that Freud was at least somewhat astray on this
aspect of his theory.
Data on overt heterosexual play, including coital play with or
without penetration, does not support the notion of a latency period
either. Ramsey and Kinsey show no evidence of striking increase in the
incidence of such activity as puberty is reached.
Kinsey's data on the
active incidence for each year did show that for boys who later go to
college, heterosexual play of all kinds dropped off after about age
ten, presumably in response to a redefinition of the meaning of this
type of behavior.
But, among boys who did not finish high school there
was reportedly little withdrawal and a high level of continuity of heterosexual
activity through preadolescence and into adolescence.
There are sexual differences, however. Among males a very much larger percentage
carried their preadolescent play directly into their adolescent
and adult activities than was true of females. The discontinuities
between the adolescent and preadolescent activities of the female appear
to be the products of social custom and not of anything in the female's
biological or psychological makeup.
Perhaps it was because I was approaching the age
of puberty, but all of a sudden my parents would
not allow me to engage in any of the boy-girl
activities.
For many, "sexual awakening," that is the dawning consciousness of
members of the opposite sex as appealing sexual and erotic partners,
comes about in adolescence. But for some it is very real and poignant
during preadolescence (and earlier as documented in earlier chapters).
The heterosexual "awakening" that comes to many during preadolescence
is well expressed by a rural midwestern boy.