Yates. Chapter 2
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Unfortunately, sexual and other revolutions are a lot of work with rather prosaic returns. The most that our generation can accomplish is a gradual disengagement from the misconceptions of our time. Our past remains to permeate the present. One less-than-liberated woman asks her physician if it is true that homosexual children result from the rear-entry coital position. Another inquires if it's wrong for her sixty-five-year-old husband still to want sex. An adolescent boy asks his coach if there is any way to prevent the wet dreams that impair his athletic prowess.

Each generation advances intellectually, but lags emotionally. A medical student and his young wife are able to speak about sex with his mother, a just-liberated matron. The young couple tests the depth of the mother's newfound philosophy by discussing many intimate details. The mother doesn't even blush. She replies with a shady joke and a sex manual quotation of her own. Finally, the young wife describes the intricate manipulations necessary for her vagina to lubricate. She suddenly turns and asks her mother-in-law, "What does it take for you to get juiced up, Mom?" The mother blushes, stammers, and is unable to answer.

Attitudes toward childhood masturbation have aptly illustrated changes in our attitudes toward sex. Prior to the eighteenth century, masturbation was condemned solely on moral grounds. Thereafter, the habit became inexorably wedded to physical disease. Masturbation was said to cause insanity, tuberculosis, syphilis, eventual impotence, or sterility, and deformed children. Those unable to control their urges sometimes committed suicide in despair. Any indulgence was the forerunner of fatal addiction.

Treatment was so drastic as to seem macabre. One physician recommended that the clitoris be "freely excised either by scissors or knife — I always prefer the scissors." The nerves leading to the penis were cut, an operation which produced permanent impotence. This was a small price to pay for freedom from debilitating disease. (Baker, 1866) In fact, one disease was created in order to explain nocturnal emissions or "wet dreams." This disease, "spermatorrhea," connoted intrinsic evil and was a penalty for early, heavy masturbation. (Schwartz, 1973)

In 1854, Charles Drysdale presented the following ominous account of this condition:
The victim wakes suddenly from a stupor, just as the discharge is pouring out, which he will try in vain to check; or perhaps he does not wake till it is over, and then, as a lethargic consciousness, which of itself tells him what has taken place, slowly awakens, he puts down his hand and sickens with despair, as he perceives the fatal drain, and thinks on the gloomy morrow which will follow. ... The patient may, after years of suffering, sink into the lowest stage of weakness, and die... the disease has in many cases progressed to insanity, and idiocy...
Gerhart Schwartz describes the profusion of mechanical devices to correct spermatorrhea which flooded an eager market. Most were spike-lined rings, to be placed about the penis at bedtime. Uncomfortable, but not unbearable without an erection, they produced excruciating pain when the penis distended. This immediately awakened the unfortunate wretch, who was then told to take a cold bath in order to relieve his excitation. Electric shocks and tight bandages were also employed. In 1908, Miss Perkins, a nurse who worked in a sanitarium, wrote about the most secure and complete device to prevent masturbation. She called it "Sexual Armour":
It is a deplorable but well-known fact that one of the most common causes of insanity, imbecility and feeble-mindedness, especially in youth, is due to masturbation or self-abuse. This is about equally true of both sexes. Physicians, nurses and attendants associated with insane asylums have long found this habit the most difficult of all bad practices to eradicate, because of the incessant attention required of them in respect to the subjects in their care. ... Therefore, with persons who have carried on such disastrous practices until serious ailments of the mind have resulted, there has been but little hope of cure. ...

My profession has made me very familiar with this subject and the many melancholy human tragedies of this character which have transpired before my own eyes have impressed upon me the great necessity of a device which will aid those concerned in the treatment of such cases, and the cure from this disastrous practice, and which will at the same time give the person under treatment all necessary personal liberty.
Her contraption consisted of a steel and leather jacket which enveloped the entire lower torso. Perforations allowed urine to escape. A hinged trap-door, bolted and padlocked in back, was opened by a second individual in order to allow for defecation. Other such devices were sold accompanied by handcuffs for additional protection.

About the turn of the century, a Michigan physician described his patient, a girl of seven:
She had been taught the habit by vicious children, at a country house from which she was adopted in the summer of 1895. I learned from the foster mother that on the advice of physicians she had given her worm remedies, they thinking that, perhaps, the irritation was due to the migration of pinworms. The parts had been kept thoroughly cleansed; she had been made to sleep in sheep-skin pants and jackets made into one garment with her hands tied to a collar about her neck; her feet were tied to the foot-board and by a strap about her waist she was fastened to the head-board so that she couldn't slide down in bed and use her heels; she had been reasoned with, scolded, and whipped, and in spite of it all she managed to keep up the habit.
This benevolent physician snipped and cleansed the tissue, thinking that the problem was due to irritation from infection. The first night after the operation, she tore off the dressings, opened up the wound with her fingers, and bled profusely. (Schwartz, 1973)

Although we often think of the United States as more advanced than its conservative European counterparts, concern with masturbation declined more slowly here. After World War I, supply houses still carried sexual restraints in their catalogues. Medical textbooks continued to mention mechanical devices, but noted their relative ineffectiveness in other than small children. As late as the 1970s a well-known textbook in urology mentioned several unfavorable conditions caused by self-manipulation.

Dr. Martha Wolfenstein has traced changes in attitude toward masturbation through her analysis of the publications of the United States Children's Bureau. Through the years these pamphlets have presented the accepted standards of child rearing. (Wolfenstein, 1953)

Between 1914 and 1921, the danger of children's sexuality was painfully evident. If not promptly and rigorously squelched, both thumb-sucking and masturbation would permanently damage the child. The prescribed treatment was to bind the hands and feet, the body spread-eagled on the bed, so that the child could not suck his thumb, touch the genitals, or even rub thighs together. Total eradication of any self-pleasuring was the goal of responsible parents.

In 1929, the focus of severity shifted to early rigorous bowel training, and exact feeding schedules. For the first time, milder methods were recommended for the control of masturbation. A baby could be given a toy to divert his attention.

In 1938, masturbation was presented as normal exploration, of little consequence. Sexuality was no longer seen as crippling and dangerous, but rather as an unimportant incident, often embarrassing to the mother. In contrast, thumbsucking still required mechanical restraint.

The trend toward leniency continued. In 1951, mothers were told that masturbation does not amount to anything, although children sometimes touch their genitals while on the toilet. The mother may experience uncomfortable feelings when she observes this, and for her own sake can distract the child with a toy.

For years parents have accepted this dogma without question. Yet what message does this attitude of studied indifference or anxious distraction give the child? Young children are not stupid. The toddler accurately senses the mother's mood. The message he receives is a message of apprehension or disapproval.

Most parents validate children's positive behavior. They say, "Your hair is so pretty the way you brushed it" or "You can be proud of making your bed so well." These messages are clear and not subject to misinterpretation. Teachers use the same approach to reinforce good behavior at school.

No one reinforces children's sexuality. We actively avoid mentioning or observing it. Have you ever heard a mother say to a child found fondling himself: "My, you've really learned how to make yourself feel good." Or have you heard a father say to his son: "It's real nice that your penis is getting bigger"? Instead, children are confronted with anxiety and ambivalence.

Today a visit to the local bookstore reveals shelf upon shelf of parenting paperbacks. The only rival in quantity is the section on sex. The big names in parenting are there: Spock, Ginott, and even some authors, such as Stella Chess, who have published extensively in the professional literature. In a surprising number, neither masturbation nor sex is listed in the index. This is especially so in books about the Montessori method. This method suggests that children who are well occupied manipulating objects should never need to manipulate themselves. Young minds are more profitably directed toward academic pursuits, and eroticism constitutes an uneconomical pastime. Is this again the "fatal drain"?

Most prominently on the shelf in the bookstore is Dr. Benjamin Spock's time-tested Baby and Child Care. This has been the parent's bible for two generations. The near-perfect face of a white infant still smiles merrily from the cover in spite of heightened racial consciousness.

Well recognized for his scope and common sense, Spock devotes four and one half pages to the subject of masturbation in each of the 1968 and 1976 revisions. He states: "We were all brought up to be disturbed by it, and we can never unlearn that. ... It's quite appropriate when a mother discovers a child in sex play to give him the idea that she doesn't want him to do it anymore, in a tone that implies that this will help him to stop." In 1976, Spock advocates an individual approach and speaks of his own concern for the neighbors' disapproval. Mothers can remonstrate mildly, "It isn't polite," or "Most fathers and mothers don't want their children to play this way," or "I don't like to see you doing it," or "That kind of play is for grownups, not for children." He indicates that shooing a child out to some other activity is usually enough to stop sex play for a long time in a normal child.

In both editions he describes the toddler's interest in sex as a wholesome but transient curiosity. A fifteen-month-old girl, sitting on the potty, may explore herself for a few seconds at a time. Distracting the child with a toy is permissible but not always necessary.

Between three and six, children are described as having true sexual feelings, rather than just curiosity. The clearly comprehensible Spock is suddenly murky. We learn that frequent or excessive masturbation is a serious condition. A sign of tenseness or worry, it may be "due to something else going wrong in the child's life or spirit." Rapid assessment, perhaps involving a child psychiatrist, is indicated. But Spock does not define "excessive." It must be more than the few seconds at a time attributed to the toddler's wholesome curiosity! In order to explain "excessive," Spock gives several examples. One is an eight-year-old boy, terrified that his mother might die, who absently handles his genitals in school while gazing out the window. Another is an almost three-year-old boy who views his infant sister's lack of penis and begins to hold his own appendage anxiously. These "excessive" masturbators seem neither very active nor very interested. Masturbation is presented as an altogether uncomfortable, but perhaps necessary, part of development which usually warrants distraction or mild suppression. Never is masturbation primarily pleasurable or desirable.

Spock is a moderate. He warns against telling children that masturbation will injure their genitals, or that it leads to insanity. Yet he suggests that more than a vaguely defined amount is a danger signal. It can proclaim a serious emotional problem. Are serious emotional problems so different from the older concept of insanity? He feels that it is quite proper for parents to uphold society's disapproval of sexuality if they agree with society. He doesn't offer instructions to those who disagree with society.

Most enlightening is Spock's recent account of his own early life published in a collection of various celebrities' first sexual experiences. Spock recounts a childhood dominated by a moralistic and opinionated mother who never, ever, changed her mind. Spock, as the oldest of six, is the chief target of her prohibitions. His mother cites sex as sinful and threatens that if a child touches himself he will have deformed offspring. Spock associates with some strange bedfellows in The First Time. Such raw and brassy collaborators as Mae West and Erica Jong disgorge spectacular details of their first sexual experiences. Not so Spock — with dignity, he circumvents any salacious material. Spock's "first time" is never depicted. Dr. Benjamin Spock is a compassionate pediatrician and a magnificent gentleman. He's as human as the rest of us.

More fashionable but less durable than Spock is Dr. Haim G. Ginott. He devotes only two pages to the topic of masturbation in his book Between Parent and Child. Far more negative than Spock, he makes the following statements:
Intellectually, parents recognize that masturbation may be a phase in the development of normal sexuality. Emotionally, it is hard to accept. And perhaps parents are not altogether wrong in not sanctioning masturbation.

Self-gratification may make the child less accessible to the influence of his parents and peers. When he takes the shortcut to gratification, he does not have to depend on pleasing anyone but himself...

Parents may exert a mild pressure against self-indulgence, not because it is pathological, but because it is not progressive; it does not result in social relationships or personal growth. The pressure must be mild or it will back-fire in wild explosions.
Ginott presents masturbation as a siphoning off of vital energies which could better be devoted to accomplishments in behalf of self and society. This is again reminiscent of Drysdale's "fatal drain." One pictures the masturbating child floating directionless in a sea of marshmallows, while his personality disintegrates. Ginott's title to the section on masturbation is "Self-gratification or Self-abuse?" One concludes that masturbation is self-abuse.

And what are the "wild explosions" that may result from indelicate management? We must treat sexual matters cautiously lest there be an eruption. The monster within must not be provoked. Sexuality, then, is also a monster.

Several other books present masturbation as a necessary part of the learning process, implying that pleasure is secondary or absent. These texts stress that any continued interest in touching denotes anxiety. Further investigation, possible psychotherapy, or restrictions are warranted. Dorothy Corkville Briggs, in a psychologically sophisticated volume entitled Your Child's Self Esteem, states that one cannot prevent the child's initial discovery of the penis, but she reassures the reader that anyway this is different from the adult experience.

In Your Child is a Person by Stella Chess and Thomas Birch, masturbation is presented as an accidental discovery requiring casual treatment and distinct directives such as, "People don't do that in public."

Dr. Lee Salk, in What Every Child Would Like His Parents to Know, continues this theme of casual treatment. One should "let him know that you know, but ignore the situation as much as possible." If masturbation seems frequent or excessive, one might make such statements as "If you want to do what you are doing, why don't you go off and do it by yourself?" "I guess it feels good, but why do you do it so often?" He also indicates that children have a secret hope that someone will set limits on what is socially acceptable.

Dr. Fitzhugh Dodson is billed as a successor to both Dr. Spock and Dr. Ginott. In Dodson's book, How to Parent, he makes a most remarkable statement: "To a toddler, his penis is no more inherently interesting than his finger or his toes." This theme of equivalency is continued as he recommends a positive approach to teaching a boy the word "penis" by pointing or touching in sequence just as one would teach a child to identify his ears or nose. He doesn't cover how to teach the words "clitoris" or "vagina" to little girls.

The popular books on parenting present consistent and culturally acceptable views of children's sexuality. The sexy child remains a threat to parental self-esteem by evoking fears of loss of control or moral disintegration. The authors recommend that we overlook, disapprove of, or correct eroticism in children. A few, caught in the midst of cultural dissonance, devalue sex or relate it to learning rather than feeling. Thus it is necessary but never nice. The child contends with absent, ambiguous, or negative responses from his parents. He quickly senses their anxiety and need for constraint. He correctly interprets sex as a distressing or cumbersome area.

How can we align these views of sexuality with the adult inclination toward increasing depth and richness of the sexual experience? Small wonder that the sex clinics continue their exponential expansion. We shall feed them patients in the future by continuing to inhibit and distort the sexual drives in our children. Nowhere is the need for prevention as great. Yet parents, in their misguided search for the proper approach, continue to saddle children with vestiges of the Victorian ethic.

In the last century we have progressed from picturing the erotic child as a diseased pervert to seeing him or her as a behavioral problem demanding considered restraint. Some parents are now able to tolerate, but not enjoy, some sexual expression, especially if they don't have to view it.

As a culture we remain preoccupied with penis size and penis envy. When will we begin systematically to develop penis pride in our boys and feelings of clitoral worth in our girls?

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