How can we prevent this misery? The only possible prevention lies in the development of a positive, enthusiastic approach to children's sexuality. The roots of all dysfunctions extend back to early childhood, and even in the first year of their lives, we shape our children's capacity for pleasure. The sex drive is singularly vulnerable. It can be diverted, elaborated, constricted, or squelched. We need to understand and nourish the wellsprings of eroticism.
We have entered an exciting era of sexual enrichment.
With Alex Comfort at bedside, we massage each other's feet,
communicate fantasies, and abandon deodorants. Erotic art,
once confined to San Francisco's North Beach, or Amsterdam's
sex shops, is available at the comer newsstand. Yet we
who frolic on the satin sheets of youth are strangely reticent
with progeny.
Even the perception of the eager suckling infant is
eclipsed by the need to deny erotic import. He is "cute," or
"famished," but never passionate. Nursing is reduced to such
aseptic components as calories and formulas. To nurse or not
is a decision for or against an intensely erotic experience.
Some mothers are rendered embarrassed and anxious by
their own response.
The nipple comes erect and hardens at
the infant's eager approach. Seconds later the breast tingles
as the milk spurts forcefully. The rhythmic tugging at the
nipple elicits genital sensations. Some women experience
serial orgasms, and then drift into a refreshing slumber.
Fewer than twenty percent of mothers in the United
States today nurse their infants. Many of those offer the
breast as a duty, and soon abandon the effort. Very few are
able simply and quietly to offer the teat and savor the sensations.
Those who choose not to nurse give reasons with which a
good Victorian could have rationalized sexual abstinence.
Breast-feeding is dirty, messy, embarrassing, and inconvenient.
It can wreck mother's body, sag her appendages, derail
her from productive efforts, sap her strength, and keep her
from knowing how much milk her infant is getting. Nursing
may make infants hard to wean because they like it too
much.
They may get too full, not receive their vitamins, or
waste away. The central values are production, cleanliness,
appearance, and the scientific method. Mutual pleasuring
between mother and infant is conspicuously absent. In fact,
the mother is thought to experience more pleasure if she
doesn't nurse, for lactation will tie her down and make her
less sexually attractive.
The woman who chooses to nurse in spite of these discomforts
has at her command many strategies and appliances to
ward off pleasure. She can allow her infant to suck only for
specified periods through the porthole of her triply reinforced
nursing bra. Though weary, she may sit upright, evacuating
her teat at the infant's first sign of satiation.
A relief bottle
allows her to "rest." If still queasy at the infant's raw excitement,
the uncontrolled squirting of the milk, and the moistened
underwear, she soon begins to prefer the sterile bottle.
As we shall see, the skin-to-skin contact between mother
and infant constitutes the basic erotic experience. These sensations
also contribute to the most fundamental form of inti-
macy-body intimacy.