All My Children

A child doesn’t want to be “kept quiet.” He needs and wants to do things that are important to him. For example, it is always exciting for the young child to investigate the contents of a purse—but nothing can compare with turning his mother’s purse inside out. Fascinating as adult secrets are in general, none are more interesting than those of one’s parents. The child is curious about the contents of his parents‘ drawers! What other people do, what they have, how they organize things—all these become important as the child begins to learn about the differences in how things are done by his family and how they’re done in other households. But first he wants to learn how things are done at home.

For example, however innocuous the contents of his mother’s purse may be, the child’s explorations of it are exciting and important play to him. Her purse must be terribly important, he reasons—look at the way she always carries it with her, clutching it so that she won’t lose it. If we appreciate our child’s investigations as such, we can take pleasure in his avid wish to find things out and be gratified by his interest in us and our possessions. But we can also go beyond this to understand the deeper and often symbolic, unconscious meaning his search has for him. Children themselves are doubtless unaware of the motive of their explorations, but we can guess the hidden meaning behind the child’s great and natural desire to investigate the contents of his mother’s purse and of the parents‘ chest of drawers. Psychoanalytic investigation has shown that such exploration, particularly of a mother’s purse, has a great deal to do with a youngster’s sexual curiosity. But it is sexual curiosity on his own level—not about sex as we might consider it.

It is worth pointing out in this connection that play with guns, especially with water pistols (and this is true primarily for boys if only because girls— much to their detriment—are given less opportunity for such play) often has to do with the child’s efforts to understand the function of the male genitals. And this not in terms of adult sexual knowledge but along the lines of little boys‘ and little girls‘ direct knowledge of what the penis is there for—urination. In terms of the young child’s experience, that’s about all there is to it. Since girls are as much interested in it as boys are, toys which squirt water (including water pistols) are of great interest to both sexes. Similarly, both boys‘ and girls‘ fascination with their mother’s purse is unconsciously connected with their curiosity about what may be hidden inside the vagina, and the secrets that might be found there. Children usually gather that in some obscure way they were found there—who knows what other secrets might be discovered? Again, the sexual organ is seen not in adult terms but from the child’s own points of reference. All children are curious about what sexual organs are there for, how it should be that they come in two interesting varieties. This is what they try to explore, and need information about—not about what adults do when they engage in sexual activities.

If we give tacit approval to our child’s investigation of drawers and of purses, and also to his play with toys that squirt water, we are also giving him implicit security in regard to his age-correct sexual curiosity. We imply that sex is a matter of legitimate interest to him. Being critical of such behavior—angrily snatching a purse away so that its contents won’t spill out, or prohibiting or showing annoyance at play with a water pistol or a toy that squirts water—is sex-inhibiting, and just at the age when freedom to explore would count most.

If exploring mother’s purse or drawers is wrong, how can trying to understand the function of her vagina be all right? Such inhibiting actions will have unfortunate consequences no matter how seriously parents tell their children that sex is “normal” or “pleasurable” or whatever terminology they employ in hopes of preventing future sexual “hang-ups.” To tell a child that his later sexual behavior will be pleasurable or approved of is of little help if he is made to feel guilty about his present symbolic sexual exploration. To him the prohibition can only mean that, it’s wrong to try to understand sex or to master sexual problems on the play level. From this it follows (in his mind) that any type of sex is wrong, no matter what parents may say in their conscious efforts to provide “correct” sex information. Only information that is given in age-correct form is comprehensible to the child; what would be age-correct information for an adult is therefore not correct for a child.

But if, through our attitudes to his symbolic sexual investigations, we can show the child that it is all right with us, this gives him the feeling that sex is an “all right” aspect of human life. If we foster a positive attitude when the child tries to explore, then the young child who has only the foggiest notions of what sex in general is all about will come to a more complete understanding gradually; the feeling of sex being “all right” he will have gained from our positive attitude to his infantile sex activities and symbolic sex explorations, and this will extend to and be supported on each new level of age-appropriate sexual awareness.

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