Throughout all fifteen Cook Islands, Mangaians are judged the most...

Throughout all fifteen Cook Islands, Mangaians are judged the most independent and the hardest workers. In spite of nightly frolics in the bush, men toil throughout the day in the pineapple fields. Teachers don't assign children homework, as they too labor past dusk. Pleasuring in no way sabotages productivity.
In Mangaia, children routinely witness adult nudity and parental intercourse. In our society, these experiences constitute "traumas," which contribute to neuroses. Here, nudity is discouraged as overstimulating and guilt-producing. Parental intercourse is misinterpreted as "Daddy is beating Mommy." Children react with anxiety and anger. In 1976, liberal Ann Landers writes, "Nudity among brothers and sisters should not be allowed after five years of age. Coeducational bathing should be stopped also." Yet in Mangaia, in the farm commune and in the cramped quarters of the less privileged, these observations are routine and don't result in emotional problems.

In Mangaia, children have the advantage of repeated, diverse observations. They soon learn that intercourse is not mortal combat but an enjoyable, mutual transaction. Children adopt a matter-of-fact attitude and begin to note details for future reference. A school principal in Mangaia tells of leaving his sow in the care of a fiveyear- old neighbor boy for a week. When he returned he found that his sow had come in heat. The child had recognized this and, as a matter of course, bred the sow to a boar some blocks away.

Comfort in seeing, touching, and smelling the naked body is one prerequisite for a total erotic response. In Mangaia children never have the opportunity to be uncomfortable.The result is an unqualified acceptance of all bodies as innately good. Children and adults are more receptive and less critical. Women who become obese, and most do, are no less attractive, and continue to obtain partners without difficulty. Delight in this easy acceptance is expressed by one middle- aged, rotund Czechoslovakian lady who wears sundresses to town in Rarotonga. She remarks that this would have elicited criticism in any of the many other places she has lived.

In our country most children are reared by continuously clothed adults who always close the bathroom door. Raw flesh, like raw sex, is dangerous-very young children may run about the house nude simply because they are seen as asexual and not too smart at that. As soon as they become more perceptive, prohibitions emerge, flies are zipped, and panties hiked up in public. To wear too little, or the wrong attire, provokes shame and the fear of ridicule. Yet these same individuals are expected as adults to disrobe spontaneously and joyfully relish their naked partner.

Alexander Rogawski comments, "Some women inhibited by strict upbringing may have a first opportunity to feel comfortable in the presence of a naked male body when they bathe their own children. This may be followed by greater comfort with their husbands, by more open exchange, and by increased ease with sexual experiences.... Parental nudity in itself is not harmful or seductive to children where it is commonplace and part of the culture." Our contradictory attitudes about nudity are but one example of our unreasonable expectations toward sex. Irrationally, we expect the "nice," fully inhibited child to turn over a new leaf and become a sensual, sexually competent adult. Ruth Benedict writes, "The adult in our culture has often failed to unlearn the wickedness or the dangerousness of sex, a lesson which was impressed upon him strongly in formative years. ... Such discontinuity involves a presumption of strain."

There are only two possible ways to change these inherent contradictions and reduce the strain. One is for grownups to minimize and constrict eroticism, becoming more like the adults in Inis Beag. The other, of course, is to promote the sexual development of children. The Irish of Inis Beag eliminate the woman's climax and drain the joy from sex. It is a land of corsets and concealment. The master chefs of Mangaia concoct a gourmet feast seasoned with orgasms. Both societies shape the child's erotic response from early infancy. So do we.