Chapter 3 <<Discovering Sex>>
Sex Play before Adolescence
Learning about Sex
Your sex life, like everybody else’s, probably began before you were born. Some researchers think it starts while the unborn child is still being carried by its mother. They have observed rhythmic masturbatory movements in the womb among male fetuses, but since girls don’t have such unmistakable signs of sexual feeling, it’s not so easy to determine when they first feel the sex impulse. There is no reason, however, to believe that it happens any later than it does for boys.
Many children make attempts to stimulate themselves sexually by masturbating as soon as they can coordinate the motion of their hands and arms, and even before that they may find other ways to do it.
Both male and female babies as young as four to six months have orgasm. No ejaculation occurs in the boys simply because the semen has not yet developed in their glands, but the feeling is the same, and it can be just as pleasurable and exciting as it is later. What comes later is psychological stimulation. If you’re feeling cheated because you haven’t had an orgasm, don’t worry. Not all boys have them before they’re able to ejaculate; some do and some don’t.
If you have an infant brother, you may have seen him lying on his stomach and pushing his penis against the bed or the floor with a thrusting motion. Does he know what he’s doing? Not in the sense that he’ll know later on, but already he’s aware that stimulating his penis will produce a pleasurable sensation. Maybe you’ve also seen him asleep in his crib but rocking back and forth rhythmically on his hands and knees, sometimes so hard the crib bangs against the wall. This is sometimes, but not always, another example of the powerful sexual impulse at work, impelling him to imitate, unconsciously, the movements of intercourse.
At this stage of infancy, a baby is still not able to coordinate his movements and put his hands on his penis in order to stimulate it, but he learns how to do that in time. However, a sizable percentage of boys don’t begin to masturbate until they are considerably older, somewhere near the beginning of adolescence, although it isn’t unusual or a sign of abnormality if it begins earlier.
Whenever stimulation begins, it’s often carried through to the point of orgasm. The difference is that semen is not ejaculated until adolescence, and only semen can impregnate a girl if you have intercourse with her. When people talk about “coming,” they mean either ejaculation (something is “coming” out of the penis), or else they mean orgasm, which is sexual climax, the sudden release of sexual tension. That’s what we mean when we talk about orgasm before puberty in boys.
It doesn’t take long to reach orgasm, and the time varies with age. Two to three minutes is the average time before adolescence. This time can be considerably prolonged and it may be a good thing to do so.
After adolescence begins, nearly all boys ejaculate within ten minutes, but about a third come in less than a minute. Of these fast workers, about half have several orgasms in a row, the second coming in approximately another minute and the third two minutes or so later. Some boys have even more successive orgasms.
But no matter how long or short a time it takes, and whether the orgasms are few or many, it’s nothing to worry about. These variations are simply one more example of the many differences among human beings. Girls experience the same kind of variations.
All these things — having sexual feelings, experiencing orgasm, masturbating — are a natural part of growing up. It’s the same as learning what pain is like, or what girls are like, or what you can do and can’t do in the society you live in, or how to play a sport. We grow up in a world full of all kinds of things. Not everyone experiences everything, but sex experiences are common to all.
You may have already discovered that something “sexy” is not necessary to arouse sexual feelings. In fact, the stimulation is sometimes completely nonsexual. For example, when a boy is very young, it’s easy for him to have an erection, and it may arrive quickly, before he knows what’s happening. When he gets older, it isn’t as easy as it was before, and then the stimulation has to be more specific.
For a very young boy, erections can happen suddenly for reasons unrelated to sex. Excitement over almost anything can produce erection. Even being frightened can create a sexual response. Sometimes it can come from nothing more than the friction of tight jeans against the penis. Boys used to like to put their hands in their pockets, and naturally they touched the penis from time to time, producing a quick erection ? some call it “pocket pool.” The coming of tight jeans, however, changed that habit for most boys, but the tightness in the crotch has made up for it.
Another common experience for a boy is to be called on in class to read something or provide an answer he isn’t really prepared to do. The resulting excitement and anxiety may generate an erection even more noticeable in today’s jeans than it used to be in pants. It can be an embarrassing experience, but there’s nothing much he can do about it. If anybody makes fun of him later, he can always reply that the same thing could happen to the teaser. It’s simply the way boys are made.
Other nonsexual things may cause erection in a young boy besides those I’ve just mentioned. It’s a long list. Being spanked sometimes does it. Various kinds of motion may produce it — riding a bicycle, taking a fast elevator, flying in an airplane, traveling by train or bus, even sitting in a car or driving fast in it. Erections might come if you’re merely lying in the warm sand on the beach, or diving, or swimming.
Emotion can also cause erections, but they’re not necessarily sexual. Fear of something might do it, or anxiety about taking a test, or seeing some authority figure you might be afraid of even if there’s no reason to be, or watching a fire, playing in an exciting game, being alone at night, or falling.
Of course, it’s the specific situations causing erections that you’re most likely to notice. Like seeing a particular girl, or watching a good-looking one, or simply thinking about a girl. These are common causes. Telling sexy jokes, or looking at an erotic picture, or seeing pictures of girls who may not even be in sexy poses can cause an erection. In these cases it’s the imagination that supplies the stimulus. Boys can even get an erection from seeing their own bodies in the bathroom mirror or from seeing other boys’ genitals.
Some less obvious sources of stimulation may lead to both erection and orgasm. Urinating is one, and so is being stimulated by the water in a shower or bathtub. Sometimes it happens when a boy rubs himself down with a towel, or feels the vibration of a vehicle, or slides down a railing, or climbs a tree. Daydreaming is a very common way to produce it, and so is reading a book. There are literally dozens, probably more, things that may stimulate a boy to orgasm, but by far the most common is self-masturbation.
Humans are curious. Babies start crawling about the floor, exploring the world. As soon as they can stand and walk, they continue their explorations. At some point this curiosity extends to other children, after they’ve satisfied themselves about their own bodies. Boys want to find out if other boys are like them, and they also want to know if girls are different.
If you think back to your earliest memories, chances are that one of them will have something to do with sex and your discovery of it. It’s natural for both boys and girls to be curious about what the sex organs of the opposite sex look like, and they find ways to satisfy their curiosity. By the time they’re five years old, about six out of ten girls have seen a male’s penis. Often it’s a younger brother who offers the first sight while he’s being bathed or diapered as his sister watches.
A baby brother is a big gift for a
girl to learn and teach a boy.
But even if a girl has a baby brother, one out of every ten girls hasn’t seen the penis of a living male by the time she’s thirteen. Parents often keep a girl from viewing it, and of course that only stimulates her interest in seeing something that’s forbidden. In the worst case, it may make her fearful and ashamed to look at a penis, and that will be a sure source of trouble later on.
Whatever parents may think they’re doing by hiding the penis, it won’t have the good end results they imagine it will. Instead there may be psychological damage, and it will be a wholly unnecessary risk in any event because girls who read magazines or illustrated art books are bound to see the penis reproduced in works of painting and sculpture. Great masters have reproduced it endlessly through the ages — Michelangelo’s magnificent “David” is a superb example — just as they have reproduced both the male and the female nude body in all its splendor. Museums are filled with their testimonials to the beauty of the human form. It doesn’t happen nearly as often anymore, but if a girl gets the idea when she’s very young that the penis (and the nude male body) is ugly or repulsive, she’ll have a lot to overcome when she gets to the point of having sexual relationships with men.
How a penis grows from age 10 to 18.
It’s far better for her to see her little brother’s penis, or that of some other boy, in the casual pattern of everyday living, and so learn to accept it as a simple fact of life. If it’s hidden, she’ll keep on wondering about it, and such secrecy can mean nothing but trouble later on.
About half of all girls have seen their father’s penis, or that of an older male relative, by the time they become adolescent. The experience means little more to them than seeing a baby’s or a small boy’s penis. They’re just things males have, and their curiosity is at least partly satisfied. But merely seeing the male sex organ and actually having sexual contact with adult males are two quite different things.
Again, there’s a great difference in age when such exploration begins. No two boys are exactly alike. At five, one out of ten will have had some sex play with other boys or with girls. In the next five years, more of them discover each other. By the time they are ten, more than a third will have had sex play, more than half of these with other boys and nearly half with girls. Sex play with sisters and brothers and cousins is not at all unusual in a preadolescent boy or girl.
Before adolescence, three-fourths have had sex play with either boys or girls, or both. Of course, this behavior varies with geographical, environmental, and economic factors.
Between the ages of 5 and 11 (roughly) there is an enormous broadening of his range of interests as the child learns many things about the world in which he lives, and as he increases his contacts with his fellows. Curiosity about his family, including intense sexual curiosity, abates as he leaves the protective canopy of his family for the wider world. But his sexual interests are still there, somewhat masked by his involvement and commitment to the exploration of his milieu. If that environment is stagnant, or punitive, or otherwise inhibits his move outward to enlarge his horizons, the child’s sexual curiosity and behavior may become active, even florid.
There’s nothing unusual or “dangerous” about early sex play. As children develop, it’s entirely natural for them to look at and explore the bodies of other young children and compare the similarities and the differences. All this sex play, either with boys or with girls, is just as natural that they get at least some sexual pleasure from doing it. Much of the time it amounts to nothing more than looking at another child’s sex organ. A girl may touch a boy’s penis, and a boy may touch her vulva. It’s a simple matter of exploring with the hands instead of the eyes.
Probably you began your own sexual exploration in much the same way that most boys do, and most girls too — that is, exposing your genitals in return for an examination of someone else’s. This is so common that it’s given a phrase to our language; “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” Millions of small boys and girls have also “played doctor,” making a game out of sexual exploration. With this kind of make-believe, children feel free to look at and examine each other as much as they like. Research shows that about two-thirds of boys either masturbate another person or are masturbated by another during their preadolescent sex play. Often each does it to the other.
Sometimes very young boys and girls may try to have intercourse with each other. They’ve learned enough about it from reading or watching, or from the conversation of older, more informed boys and girls, but usually there’s no actual penetration by the penis. About half the boys who have preadolescent sex play make the attempt. Most often the boy gets on top of the girl and goes through the motions. Children at this early stage rarely understand what actually happens in intercourse. Only a very few try to insert something into a girl’s vagina — a finger or a stick — and even fewer try to put their mouths on another’s sex organ to find out that mouth-to-crotch resuscitation isn’t so bad after all. About a quarter of boys manage to insert their penises at least partially into the girl’s vagina, sometimes even all the way, and go through the motions of intercourse.
For most girls, such early sex play produces no sexual arousal on their part. Maybe one out of ten (1/10) gets a feeling she could identify in later years as arousal. For those few girls who are aroused, however, the experience can lead to orgasm, and it can be as full and complete and satisfying as those they’ll have when they’re older. Even baby girls less than a year old can have these orgasms, and sometimes they do.
Girls in general tend to have more sex play at younger ages, say from four to nine, than they do between ten and thirteen. For half the girls who experience early sex play, it happens only once, or perhaps two or three times at the most. For others it happens more often, and these experiences may cover the entire preadolescent period.
Pre-teens spend more time with other children than they did before, and that leads to the common “playing-doctor” scenes, in which sexual curiosity is satisfied in another way. Parents may be startled to hear an occasional obscenity from their children, as they acquire a new vocabulary in the playground. They play about equally with both sexes, although they tend more and more toward their own sex as this period advances.
Sometime before puberty, about one out of ten (1/10) boys gets the idea of putting another boy’s penis into his mouth. Children naturally like what psychologists call “oral behavior.” As infants, they try to put everything that interests them into their mouths, so it’s not remarkable that during their sexual explorations it occurs to some of them that a penis might taste good. Or they just want to see what it’s like. In growing up, it’s simply another part of learning what the human body is all about and how to handle it.
A period between five and twelve is a time when a child’s chief attachments are to those of the same sex, and there are, often episodes of genital manipulation. If they have the chance, however, children just as readily engage in heterosexual play. It is play usually without any emotional commitment; love comes later. Consequently, "when prepubertal boys say they “hate girls,” what they are doing is consolidating their masculinity, not expressing any homosexual feelings or activity.
While the sexes segregate socially in the middle grades until they are about age twelve, there is no period in which most boys and the great majority of girls are not interested in the other sex. They say freely that they want to get married some day, or that they have a boy friend or a girl friend, or even that they are in love. In the popular belief, all boys in this period are supposed to disdain girls, but the research shows that only about 20 percent of them have really negative feelings about romance.
Girls sometimes have sex play also with other girls — about as often as with boys. This, too, is usually just curious exploration rather than any deliberate attempt at sexual arousal. For about a third of children, such episodes consist only of looking; the other two-thirds go so far as to touch, and in two out of ten cases, it involves the insertion of fingers or other objects into the vagina. That happens more frequently between girls than between boys and girls. These experiences between girls rarely involve oral-genital contact — that is, the mouth on the sex organ — and as I’ve noted, the same is true for boys.
On the whole, boys are more likely to have sex play before adolescence than girls. Not infrequently a girl may be involved in sex play with two or more boys at the same time, but fewer boys are ever involved with two or more girls simultaneously. It’s true, too, that boys are more likely to start sex play with girls than the other way around.
A period between nine and twelve is a time when children become more a sort of “social animals”. They begin to read, and to think for themselves; they are less under the ever-watchful eye of the parent. They are out playing or boisterously at play inside. They seem to have a good many interests, usually non-sexual, and they are likely to regard the opposite sex in general as inhabiting another world and only occasionally becoming a part of their own. No wonder parents think that the earlier, exploratory stage has been replaced by a whole range of “safe” interests, and that therefore they have nothing more to worry about until the child is adolescent.
Nevertheless, everything goes on as before, at different levels. Masturbation continues, sex play continues in various ways — often with the same sex — and there is more experimentation between the sexes. All this within the context of the visible world of many interests that the parents see. In this period, consequently, it is necessary for parents to go on with the sex education they began earlier, repeating what was said before, perhaps, but at a different level of comprehension.
Of course, it’s ideal if boys and their parents (girls, too) learn from each other and if parents can understand that sex play before adolescence is a natural part of growing up and that most children do it. Children keep right on playing the childhood games they’ve always played — mama and papa, doctor and nurse — the same games the parents played, too. In these games children use to look at and explore each other’s bodies. Such sexual activity is healthy and enjoyable in itself and is even worthwhile if it helps children accept sex naturally. There’s just one reservation, though. While most preadolescent sex play is healthy, it can be wrong and even dangerous if it’s used to take advantage of other children. As I said earlier, it’s wrong to force sex on someone who doesn’t want it and is not yet emotionally ready.
But where do we draw the line? When does it stop being clean and healthy and become harmful? It’s a big question. Fortunately, the answer is not very complicated. Boys see it every day on the playground when a bully teases, hurts, or abuses a smaller boy. That’s what happens when sex play is wrong, except that the bully may not necessarily be older or larger. If he imposes his sexual desires on another child against the child’s wishes or personal beliefs, he’s no better than the bully who abuses a weaker child. There can be long-range effects from this kind of treatment. Resentment and anger in the victim may influence his feelings about people, or about sex, in the future.
So the danger is clear — when a boy, older or not, intimidates another boy (or girl) and insists on making him perform some sexual act in which he isn’t interested. Sex play performed because a child has been argued into it or bullied into it, or because someone wants to gain another child’s favor — that isn’t healthy sex.
Differences in age can also turn a healthy act into an unhealthy one. Where sex play is involved, the closer to the same age the two children are, the better. If there’s a wide difference in age, it’s usually the older boy is either exploiting or seducing the younger one, and that’s the kind of thing parents worry about when they try to prevent their children from having any sex play at all.
Now that we have identified the dangers, the good news is that playing with girls sexually before adolescence and trying to understand how they are made and how they react increases the chances for a satisfactory sex life when a boy grows up. Many boys already have had sex play with girls, and those who haven’t are likely to indulge in sexual activity with girls in spite of anything anyone else may say about it. They are simply following in the footsteps of millions of boys before them, many of whom have been able to lead happier lives as adults because of their early contacts with girls. But they will just have to understand that most parents disapprove of such activity.
What does that mean? It means privacy if you want to do such things. Both adults and parents have private areas of their lives, and should have them. In fact, everybody needs some kind of privacy, and sexual privacy is the most important kind to have. Some parents want their children to believe that sexual acts carried out in private must be “dirty.” They want to know what you’re doing behind the bedroom door. Small children learn quickly that if they follow their natural instincts and masturbate on the front lawn or in front of adults, they’ll be punished, but if they do it in private, usually in the privacy of their own beds and room, and don’t get caught, they can satisfy themselves. They have learned that sex is a private matter.
Whatever kind of sexual act a boy or a girl wants to do, they should do it with someone they know. Parents are properly concerned about older men who hang around schools and comer candy stores or cruise along in a car, hoping to lure a boy or girl into sexual behavior with them. These men are very real dangers, are bullies, sexual exploiters, adult versions of the playground bullies we’ve been talking about, and police as well as parents are properly concerned about them because, as the newspapers so frequently tell us, these men can be a great deal worse. They can turn out to be kidnappers and murderers.
It’s natural for parents to have these fears, and they are far from being unjustified, but at the same time another danger arises if small children are forbidden over and over to speak to any adult on the street, or if they are taught to be hostile and suspicious toward any adult who speaks to them, anywhere or anytime. If it’s carried too far, the result may be a lifelong difficulty in dealing with other people far out of proportion to the chance of a child’s seduction or exploitation by a child molester. Boys need to understand that molesters, exploiters, and even more dangerous people are out there, and must be avoided, but the percentage of adult strangers they see in a day who belong in that class is so tiny as to be almost nonexistent.
In other words, there’s a big difference between the man who kids you gently in the candy store and the one who stands outside and offers you something if you’ll get into his car. To put them both in the same category, along with any other strange adult, is to lay the groundwork for a future problem. It isn’t easy to erase suspicion and fear when it’s firmly implanted in a young child’s mind. And since, in this case, these feelings are connected with sex, both sex and adults can become something to be feared. This is true for boys, but even more so for girls.
As I observed earlier, boys are much more specific in their sexual interests than girls, so it isn’t surprising that older men are sometimes interested in young girls and hope to get some kind of sexual response from them. At least a quarter of girls reaching adolescence have been approached by older men or perhaps have even had direct sexual contact with them. By the time they’re seventeen, nearly all girls have had approaches made to them in one way or another. Appreciative whistles from strangers on the street or from passing truck drivers are trivial. Approaches can be verbal or they can go to the other extreme of exposing the penis or touching a girl’s sex organ, or if a man gets the response he hopes for, actual intercourse. If a girl friend’s father puts his arm around her from behind and presses on her breasts, or strokes her buttocks affectionately, or likes to put his arms around her, it may be a hardly concealed sexual advance. It may be harder to deal with a loving uncle who pats his niece’s thigh or some other part of her anatomy, and even more frequently, it may be a more or less direct sexual advance from a young father who is taking a baby-sitter home. Warning signals should, and probably will, flash in a girl’s mind.
Girls are often embarrassed and bewildered about how to handle these situations. Most likely they’ll feel threatened and uncomfortable, at least, particularly since they’ve neither invited nor expected the advances. Or so they honestly believe. Yet sometimes a flirtatious girl, full of herself and conscious of her sexual attractiveness, may encourage a man without realizing she’s done it.
If a girl is approached by an older man and hasn’t invited it, the best thing to do is to let him know flatly, and at once, that she’s not interested. There’s no need to be hysterical. Just be firm. Otherwise, if she’s hesitant and silent, so confused and taken aback that she doesn’t know what to say or how to handle the situation, a man may take her silence for consent. The problem may be complicated, too, if a young girl feels that she’s in the presence of a more powerful person, an authority figure like her parents, and thinks she can deal with him as she would a boy of her own age — probably the only similar experience she’s ever had.
A girl should remember that she has every right to let the man know how she feels. Afterward she’ll be much more careful not to let herself be put in such a situation again. Unfortunately, it can’t always be anticipated. The advances of a girl friend’s father, or the father of the baby you’ve been sitting with, are hard to anticipate unless there have been some previous warning signs. If something happens unexpectedly, it’s right not to be awed by his greater age and authority and to simply reject his advance, just as you would those from a boy you didn’t like well enough to let him fondle you.
It’s the girl who consciously or unconsciously invites advances from older men who may be in trouble. Sometimes it’s the sheer pleasure of knowing she can attract an older man, one who has singled her out, that makes her act in a flirtatious or a seductive way. That's when things get out of hand, because the man is likely to become more aggressive than a girl likes or knows how to handle.
What we’ve been talking about are things that can happen in everyday life. A different kind of problem is the “flasher,” as we say, the stranger who exposes his penis to a young girl. These men have a serious psychological problem and can’t help their compulsive behavior. Sometimes they mistakenly hope that a young girl may be interested, but often they want to see the reaction of shock, revulsion, or surprise. The best way to deal with them is to show complete indifference and keep cool. In such a situation a girl may think it’s the exhibited penis that’s ugly and repulsive, but in fact it’s the circumstances surrounding the incident that are repellent, not the penis itself
Another fairly common experience occurs when a girl goes to a movie alone, and a man sitting next to her slips a hand under her thigh or makes some other kind of sexual advance. Your response should be simple. Get up and move to another seat. If he persists, complain to the manager.
The best policy is simple. Just be careful about sexual bullies, adult or your own age. There’s usually something more to such a relationship than fun and games. As I’ve said, you’re much better off playing such games with boys and girls your own age whom you know well rather than with strangers. In later life, you probably won’t often have sex with strangers whom you’ve just met too. Perhaps never. It’s not a good idea then, and it isn’t now.
In fact, sex among preadolescents usually involves children who do know each other well and play together. As I observed earlier, most boys play such sex games as mutual examination and manipulation well before puberty. Their own instincts lead them to these experiments. But there always seems to be a shyness and hesitation about doing such things with a new child in the neighborhood or a visitor. In childhood, as in later life, sex is usually most rewarding when it happens with someone you know well. All adults need to develop feelings of friendship and affection for their own well-being, and the time to develop these feelings is during the growing up process, when a child learns about living with other people.
There are real problems connected with preadolescent sex play, but they’re not what many people think they are. Most adolescents have learned by that time what one of the worst problems is — being caught by an adult. A child caught in the middle of a sex experience and made to feel guilty and afraid is likely to begin feeling that sex is a dirty thing, something to be conducted secretly in a dark corner if at all. That can mean plenty of trouble in later life.
Another problem is the boy who has been labeled “bad.” Maybe he’s had some sex play with a child in the neighborhood who has gone home and told his mother, who then has forbidden her child to play with him again. When the boy’s parents discover this and learn the reason for it, often from the parents of the offended child, punishment usually follows. But then the word may get around among other neighborhood parents, especially if the original discovery is repeated. But even if it isn’t, once the story is known in the neighborhood, the offender is viewed with suspicion by all parents. And so a “bad boy,” who has done nothing other children aren’t doing, is started on a path leading to later trouble.
Finally, just remember that sex isn’t something all by itself in your life, something isolated and secret. It’s an essential and important part of the life of every human being, but it must be private to avoid collision with the rights of other people. It’s worth remembering, too, that sex and affection for other people go together in good relationships. Sex is better and more fun if affection is involved than if it is practiced by itself for no better reason than because it’s there.
Whatever form preadolescent sex play takes, the only real harm that can come from it, everything else being equal, is the feeling of guilt that may result. That can be more damaging than any sexual act. Whatever you’ve done has also been done by millions of other growing boys. No one needs to feel guilty or ashamed about these healthy and normal activities. As I’ve said, a girl or a boy who has had sex play with girls and boys her own age is likely to have benefited from the experiences in one way or another, particularly her later adjustments to sex, and consequently they’re valuable, even if some of them turned out badly. In that case they may learn as they would from any other unhappy experience. Otherwise, he or she will have learned something positive about the way his or her own body works, what its reactions can be, and something about other people, too. Pleasure has been given and received. All these things have their value for the future.
