Sex Is a Learned Behavior
Prevalence of Self-Reported Childhood Sexual Experience with Peers
Studies that ask adults to remember their own childhood experiences report childhood sexual experiences with peers ranging from 39 to 87% depending on age. Reynolds, Herbenick, and Bancroft found that 87% of adult males and 84% of adult females remembered having sexual experiences with peers prior to starting high school. Among very young children this may involve helping each other wipe after using the toilet, asking to touch the other’s genitals, kissing while pretending to be married, or swap-ping stories about adult sexual talk. U.S. studies report that about 66% of boys (57% girls) play doctor, and 64% of boys (59% of girls) in Australia do- Viagra Australia store; in Spain, 94% (boys and girls), and in Sweden, 76% (74% of girls). Late grade-school and middle-school children frequently engage in kissing and light fondling and sometimes direct genital stimulation.
Forty-three percent of males and 30% of females reported that there was erotica or pornography in their home, and many more—80% of males and 49% of females—reported having access to pornographic materials outside of the home during childhood.
What If You Did Not Have Healthy Sexual Experiences and Learnings?
While parents, teachers, policy-makers, and others worry about childhood sexual experiences with peers, it is important to understand that age-appropriate sexual exploration is healthy and part of sexual growth. In fact, the question is “What happens to children who have no childhood sexual experiences with other kids?” Several studies indicate that without age-appropriate childhood sexual experiences, men actually found it more difficult in their 30s to become sexual, to experience sexual well-being, and to be free from sexual problems. This reinforces the beneficial effects of graduated and sequential sexual experiences.
Comfort and skills are learned step-by-step, over years of experience. Think how stressful and strange a job interview would be had you not inter-acted with adults at school, given talks in class, or filled out forms through-out school years. Similarly, experiences with touching, kissing, hugging, fondling through clothes, fondling with clothes partially removed, laying together on a sofa or a towel on the beach, and learning what such experiences involve and how they feel are healthy when you are ready and it is welcomed, comfortable, and acceptable for both the boy and the girl.