Sexuality in Childhood

Healthy sexual interactions in childhood set the stage for healthy relationships in adolescence and adulthood. For example, parent-child communication during childhood about sexuality appears to have a significant influence on adolescent and adult sexual behavior. However, much of this communication comes in the form of silence about sexuality, and "one of the clearest messages received by many children from their parents' silence about or discomfort with discussing sexuality is that the issue should not be raised" (Kahn 1985, p. 268). When communication does take place about sexuality, it is often between mothers and daughters with sons getting less sexual information in the home and fathers being almost entirely absent during this type of parent-child communication (Kahn 1985).

Despite the infrequency of communication about sexuality with children, there are many ways in which parental communication with children concerning this issue affects later sexual behavior. Parents have less and less influence on their children's sexual information as children get older but can have a profound effect on children's sexuality if they speak to them when they are younger. Parents who speak to their children about sexuality have a strong influence on the development of their children's values concerning homosexuality, abortion, sex roles, and nudity. Children who feel free to speak to their parents about issues surrounding sexuality are more likely to come to their parents if they are sexually abused and also have an increased ability to resist sexual coercion (Kahn 1985). In addition, if sexuality is learned in the home, intercourse is likely to be delayed, whereas in homes where sexuality is not discussed, early coital experience and promiscuity is more common among adolescents and young adults (Kahn 1985).

Another major factor that influences later sexual behavior is the type and frequency of sexual behavior in childhood. Although negative sexual experiences in childhood, such as those that are not mutual or are painful, may have negative effects on adolescent and adult sexual functioning, positive sexual experiences in childhood, often in the form of sex play, have positive benefits for later sexual functioning. Young adults who reported exclusively positive and consensual sexual experiences before age sixteen reported less anxiety and more current sexual arousal and pleasure than those who had no childhood sexual experiences (Bauserman and Davis 1996). In general, a child's perception of early sexual experiences as either negative or positive, consensual or nonconsensual, is most significant in relation to later sexual functioning and attitudes about sexuality, and the frequency of some early sexual activities is positively correlated with frequencies at later ages (Bauserman and Davis 1996).