The question before us is this : what, exactly, is the sexuality of a child? What does the prepubescent sexuality look like? How much of what we think of as adult sexuality is in fact present our entire lives? What does puberty add?

First, let’s deal with the physical equipment. There can be no doubt that children are born with fully functional sexual organs. All the requisite plumbing, glands, and nerve endings are present and children are capable of sexual pleasure from the day they are born. Indeed, in vitro imaging has revealed that some babies beg to masturbate even in the womb.

This should come as no surprise to most people. Very few of us have absolutely no sexual responses before puberty. They might be transitory and the child may not be able to understand them or fit them into a context, but erection and vaginal lubrication both happen well before puberty kicks in.

And then there is masturbation. Data on childhood masturbation is understandably scarce, but what is known clearly shows that, while not necessarily leading to orgasm, most children indulge in some form of solitary sexual exploration on their own. Such a rich source of sensation and mystery will not go unexplored. This may or may not lead to actual masturbation, in other words activity specifically in search of pleasant sensations, and that in turn might lead to orgasm, but rarely does.

The one exception is children who have become sexually precocious due to sexual abuse.

There is also childhood sexual play. Children are naturally curious about what is going on down there, both on themselves and others. The extraordinary amount of sensations that come from our sexual regions are alone enough reason to be fascinated, as well as their intimate relationship with our eliminatory functions.

Add in the very peculiar way adults behave around the topic, the utter mysteriousness of what they see of sexuality as it is hinted at on television or online, and the very clear message that this is something that is Not To Be Talked About (and therefore very exciting to find out about), and the stage is set for “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”.

So clearly there is something there before puberty. We are not born unsexed, a sexual tabula rasa until day 1 of puberty. There is something very like sexuality before puberty. But is it a true sexuality?

I have given this some thought, and my answer is a qualified no. While the equipment is intact and the interest is there and the desire for pleasure, the one missing ingredient that only adolescence can bring is lust.

Without the hormonal changes of puberty, there is no sex drive, no desire for a mate, no falling in love, no driving force that pulls people together. The sexual nature of a child is a mere intellectual interest compared to the emotional firestorm that puberty triggers and that stays with us, dimming over time but never going out. The machinery is all there, but there is no energy source to make it all go.

It is a qualified no, however, because case history after case history has shown that while the child might not have a sexuality per se, the sex-related things that happen in our childhood can lie dormant until puberty and then suddenly become integrated into the newly formed sexuality.

It could be something as simple as a sense-memory of some very pleasant sensations created by a particular piece of clothing, or something as complex as a deep and crippling paraphilia that renders the individual incapable of enjoying sexual intimacy because they have so strongly sexually fixated on something outside the realm of the more usual sexual relations.

Sexual imprinting in human beings is not well understood, and obviously a little tricky to study directly.

So now that we have a rough picture of childhood sexuality, what do we do with it?

My main purpose in creating this accurate and unfiltered picture of childhood sexuality was to use it as a starting point for fighting against the sexual repression of children that has sneaked back into the culture after the Sexual Revolution under the auspices of the fight against child sexual abuse.

As I said in the article preceding this one, most of the progress made during the Sexual Revolution had been retained. We don’t freak out about masturbation or sex play any more. We don’t pretend children are somehow sexless innocents. Most parenting manuals have the same sex-positive advice about not traumatizing your poor child when you find them doing perfectly natural things. Parents know that all children do the same things, and so their children are not abnormal for doing them. They also know that, at some point, they will have to navigate one of our strongest taboos when they have The Talk about where babies come from.

But now we teach them that their sexual potential makes them the target of predators, and that is not good either. It is yet another way of teaching children to fear and repress their own sexuality, and we think we are doing it for their own good, but it is just the same old taboo coming back again.

Because the child/sex taboo is so strong, we don’t want to deal with our children’s sexuality at all. The subject makes us incredibly uncomfortable even from several steps removed, and the rampant fear/hate of pedophiles and the resultant climate of suspicion and paranoia it brings, has only made this issue exponentially worse.

So it is very easy for parents to give in to the temptation to simply suppress the subject wholly. Shut down all discussion of the subject, make it very clear that it is Not To Be Talked About, and the problem seemingly goes away.

But that’s your problem…. not your child’s. If you truly love your child and are willing to sacrifice your own wellbeing for theirs, what gets suppressed will be your issues and you will deal openly and honestly with your children about the subject, answering all their questions as best as you can, and keep your issues to yourself.

That is the only way these pointless taboos will be destroyed.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.