CHILDHOOD SEXUALITY (6-7 YEARS): EROTIC AWAKENING. LEARNING ANATOMICAL DIFFERENCES
Erotic awakening is of two kinds, autoerotic and sociosexual or interpersonal erotic. Since Freud and Kinsey, if not before, we have been aware that autoeroticism—erotic gratification obtained from the self without the participation of another person—can be present from the first year of life. Interpersonal awakening comes at different ages for different persons depending on biological-response capacity and maturation, temperamental tendencies (cuddler or noncuddler, for instance), and experience.
Erotic awakening is a vague and mystical concept. What it means is that someone who previously lacked the capacity for erotic experience now possesses that capacity. One has “new life” so to speak; something is there that was not there before. Puberty is sometimes looked upon as establishing the biological-response base for the first erotic event. But we know that the capacity for at least the rudiments of erotic awakening is present from birth or shortly thereafter. Erotic awakening comes when that which is “dormant” or “asleep” is aroused to action. The experience may be feeding at the breast of the mother, being handled or caressed at a tender age, a first kiss, or later “falling in love,” first coitus, or first coitus with orgasm. Some parents consciously or unconsciously treat their offspring as though the erotic capacity were present from birth, as indeed it is. Such parents act as though what they do to and with the infant or child will affect the time at which they experience their erotic awakening and that after awakening they will in fact be different. This belief no doubt explains much of the style of infant and child care that mothers give their offspring, starting with the decision to suckle or not to suckle the infant.
Besides direct erotic encounters with peers, there are many events which stimulate the growth of sexual curiosity and aid in sexual awakening of the infant or child. Among these events are the presence of a puppy in the home, seeing a litter of kittens for the first time, seeing members of the family in the nude, noticing the differences in men’s and women’s bodily characteristics, seeing the changes that occur in a pregnant woman, the presence of a new baby, or a chance bit of information concerning the coming of babies or other sexual events.
Despite such apparent sexual precocity, children aged three to four have some difficulty learning that there are genital differences between the sexes. They do not appear to form clear concepts of genital differences until ages five to seven. From a sample of children mostly from a lower socioeconomic level, whose parents indicated that many of them had not been told about basic anatomical differences, Conn, and Conn and Kanner, were able to elicit knowledge of genital differences from only fifty percent of children ages four to six years and from seventy-two percent of children ages seven to eight. Among children of parents with more formal education, Butler found a similar degree of ignorance among children of four to five years of age. Although fifteen of seventeen children had been informed by their parents of anatomical differences, Butler was able to elicit awareness of genital differences from only five of the fifteen children. Ketcher found in a study of 226 three- to nine-year-olds that children most easily make sex differentiations based on the clothing worn by each sex, followed by differentiation based on hair styles, and lastly by observing differences in genitalia and breasts. Age seemed to be the most important factor in ability to differentiate between the sexes, and younger girls were better than younger boys in this regard. Children report that before their first witnessing they had assumed that the genitals of all people were alike.
The young child who has been told which male and female attributes are used in producing a baby still remains perplexed as to how the elements come together. Even children who have observed parental coitus do not find this sufficient to create an articulated sexual image of the mother or father, whatever else it might do.
By age five, children are easily aware of most of the non-coital content of the marital relationship—cooking, cleaning house, caring for children, going to work. They practice many of the marriage and family roles through “playing house.” They also have a good idea of the field of future eligible mates, opposite-sex peers of the same generation but not of the same family. Broderick found that the majority of five-year-olds he studied were already committed to their own eventual marriages. This majority increases through each age group throughout childhood.
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