Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They'd Ask) The Secrets to Surviving Your Child's Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens

Chapter 1 How did this happen? The natural history of your child's sexuality You are flat on your back. Your shirt is pulled up over your belly, and your pants are down around your hips. Someone has just squirted a glob of cold jelly below your navel. This is one of those miraculous moments in life that doesn't always live up to its billing in terms of physical comfort. The ultrasound. Your main concern is whether the baby will be normal. But you are hoping for a little fun. "I want to see a face," you say, craning up from the table. And you want to know if it's a girl or a boy. The last time they said they couldn't be sure. The radiologist starts sliding the probe over your belly. "There's the head." "The head? Where?" She bends the monitor in your direction. "See, right here." You see something that looks like a blizzard being broadcast on a 1969 Magnavox. "Where?" (Is she pressing harder?) "Here, right here, see that?" She is definitely pressing harder. You consider humoring her. Then a ghostly face appears in the snow. It is tiny, but it is a face. You can make out a delicate profile: an eye, and a nose, and cupped up near its open mouth, a tiny . . . something. A burger? "That's its left hand." A left hand! The baby looks so sweet and tranquil, as if it's asleep. A sleeping angel. A staticky sleeping angel. "It's a boy." You are now in a new part of the blizzard. "Are you sure?" "Pretty sure. See, here? Between the legs?" Now she is pressing with real excitement. "Oh yeah, those are legs. I definitely see them." "Well, if you look right between them, you can just make it out." "Make what out?" "His penis. You see? He's got an erection." "A what?" An erection. Your Child Is Already Sexual We know two things about children's sexual development: Children learn about sex from the world. And children are inherently sexual. We have all easily accepted the first idea. The second one gives us a little more trouble. At least since the Enlightenment days of John Locke, the idea of a child as a blank slate scribbled on by the world has been a favorite. Nowhere has this idea held more sway than in the area of sexuality: We like to think our children are born without it. A hundred years ago, the Victorians, who perfected the idea of the innocent child, made a science out of sheltering children from knowledge about sex, going so far as to clothe suggestively nude piano legs with ruffled skirts. Children were innocents. Adults were sexual. If children became sexual, it must be through the influence of adults. Just as we worry about the effects of the Internet today, Victorian heads of household feared the nursemaid might kindle randy thoughts in their children while Mother and Father were away. Little wonder the world considered Freud's theories of the inherent sexuality of children about as welcome as salmonella at a state dinner. We have learned a lot about the sexual development of children since Freud first alarmed our ancestors. Many of the specifics within his theory have been discarded. But the core of his heretical idea remains. Sexuality, we understand, develops naturally in all children. Its seeds can be found in infants, and it unfolds into mature sexual feeling in children as they grow, whether we tell them what it all means or remain resolutely silent. How does this happen? How does an erection on an ultrasound evolve into the complex mating ritual practiced in a school stairwell by a nervous eleventh grader and his best friend's girlfriend's sister? We are going to answer this question in a moment, to the extent that it's possibRichardson, Justin is the author of 'Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They'd Ask) The Secrets to Surviving Your Child's Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens' with ISBN 9781400051281 and ISBN 1400051282.