IF SEXUAL experiences produce children with a healthy and direct interest in sex, what do we as parents have to fear? Our fears are as prolific as our fantasies. The monster of sexual pleasure, once loosed, might no longer be controllable. Children would experiment together sexually on the front porch, or rape and incest would become common. Imagine if you will a trip to the supermarket with your small sexy child. How embarrassing to find him with one hand stroking a melon and the other in his pants!
We as parents try much harder not to do wrong than to do
right. It is for the visionary or the activist to explore new
paths. By the time we assume the massive responsibility of
parenthood, we attempt only to navigate the middle of a
well-worn road.
The fear that we may lose control of our children's
impulses is part of our fear that we may lose control of our
own. If we expressed our sexual desires freely, would there
ever be time for work? What would our parents say? Would
supper be ready on time? Our intent to live productive, sensible
lives ever reinforces our need to control ourselves and
our children.
Our children seem like an especially visible and often
unpredictable part of our souls. We expect that people will
judge us by our offspring. The mother on the subway who
glances down to find her little girl rubbing the leg of her doll
against her crotch is mortified, turns scarlet, and pushes her
small charge off the train onto the platform at the next station.
A more difficult, if less visible, area is the child who
approaches an adult with obvious sexual interest.
A fouryear-old girl squarely demands to see and feel the bulge
beneath her father's zipper. A five-year-old boy, afraid of the
dark, climbs in bed with his mother and later rubs against
her bare posterior. Parents are confused and upset.
When does the intimacy of infancy cease? It is permissible,
after all, to allow the suckling eight-month-old infant
absently to finger the mother's other nipple? When does the
needy, innocent infant become a threat to the parent's sense
of morality? This depends upon the mother's comfort with
her own sexuality. If we fear the monster within, then we
dread the monster in our child.
What can we as parents do with these fears? Many of us
will recognize the problem but elect to do nothing. There's
safety in sameness-sex is a loaded subject which could
backfire. In spite of this, some parents will painfully reflect
upon their own erotic limitations, wishing that they had
been raised with more open acceptance or even encouragement
of sexuality. What then can they do to facilitate a more
robust and joyful response for their children? How do they
avoid the pitfalls and how far is far enough? The answers can
be appreciated through an understanding of the child's erotic
development.
The infant is born with a tremendous erotic potential. If
this is realized, he or she will become a fully orgasmic adult.
The sexual experience will be intensely gratifying, largely
predictable, and persistent even into old age. But the newborn
infant doesn't know what sex is or how to do it-or
much else, for that matter.