Sexual Development

Video 6.2 “What Happens When?” Child and Adolescent Sexual Development explains major milestones in sexual development throughout childhood and adolescence, as well as how to support kids during these stages.

Males and females are capable of erections and vaginal lubrication even before birth (Martinson, 1981). Arousal can signal overall physical contentment and stimulation that accompanies feeding or warmth. Infants begin to explore their bodies and touch their genitals as soon as they have sufficient motor skills. This stimulation is for comfort or to relieve tension rather than to reach orgasm (Carroll, 2007).

Curiosity about the body and about others’ bodies is a natural part of early childhood. Consider this example. A mother is asked by her young daughter: “So it’s okay to see a boy’s privates as long as it’s the boy’s mother or a doctor?” The mother hesitates a bit and then responds, “Yes. I think that’s alright.” “Hmmm,” the girl begins, “When I grow up, I want to be a doctor!” Hopefully, this subject is approached in a way that teaches children to be safe and know what is appropriate without frightening them or causing shame.

Self-stimulation is common in early childhood. Males are often shown by other males how to masturbate, but females tend to find out accidentally. Males masturbate more often and touch themselves more openly than do females (Schwartz, 1999).

Hopefully, parents respond to this without undue alarm and without making the children feel guilty about their bodies. Instead, messages about what is going on and the appropriate time and place for such activities help the child learn what is appropriate.

Parents should take the time to speak with their children about when it is appropriate for other people to see or touch them. Many experts suggest that this should occur as early as age 3, and of course the discussion should be appropriate for the child’s age.  One way to help a young child understand inappropriate touching is to discuss “bathing suit areas.” Kids First, Inc. suggests discussing the following: “No one should touch you anywhere your bathing suit covers. No one should ask you to touch them somewhere that their bathing suit covers. No one should show you a part of their or someone else’s bodies that their bathing suit covers.” Further, instead of talking about good or bad touching, talk about safe and unsafe touching. This way children will not feel guilty later on when that sort of touching is appropriate in a relationship.

Sexual development is impacted by a dynamic mixture of physical and cognitive change coupled with social expectations. With physical maturation, adolescents may become alternately fascinated with and embarrassment by their changing bodies, and often compare themselves to the development they notice in their peers or see in the media. For example, many adolescent females focus on their breast development, hoping their breasts will conform to an ideal body image.

As sex hormones cause biological changes, they also affect the brain and trigger sexual thoughts. Culture, however, shapes actual sexual behaviors. Emotions regarding sexual experience, like the rest of puberty, are strongly influenced by cultural norms regarding what is expected at what age, with peers being the most influential. Simply put, the most important influence on adolescents’ sexual activity is not their bodies, but their close friends, who have more influence than do sex or ethnic group norms (van de Bongardt et al., 2015).

Sexual interest and interaction are a natural part of adolescence. Sexual fantasy and masturbation episodes increase between the ages of 10 and 13. Masturbation is very ordinary—even young children have been known to engage in this behavior. As the bodies of children mature, powerful sexual feelings begin to develop, and masturbation helps release sexual tension. For adolescents, masturbation is a common way to explore their erotic potential, and this behavior can continue throughout adult life.

Adolescent Sexual Activity

Teenagers are much more sexually active today than they were before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. About 43 percent of never-married teens ages 15–19 of both sexes have had sexual intercourse (Martinez et al., 2011); this percentage represents a drop from its highest point, in 1988, of 51 percent for females and of 60 percent for males. About three-fourths of girls in today’s sexually experienced group and 85 percent of boys in this group use contraception, most often a condom, the first time they ever have sex. In their most recent act of sexual intercourse, almost 86 percent of girls and 93 percent of boys used contraception, again most often a condom.(REF – We can update all these using YRBS)

If 43 percent of teens have had sexual intercourse, that means the majority of teens, 57 percent, have never had intercourse. It is interesting to examine their reasons. The table below identifies the main reason given for never having sexual intercourse. The top reason for both sexes is religion and morals, followed by concern about a possible pregnancy and not having found the right person with whom to have sex (Martinez et al., 2011).

Table 6.1 Main Reason Given for Never Having Sexual Intercourse, Ages 15–19 (%)

Teenage Pregnancy

Most teenage pregnancies and births are unplanned and are part of a more general problem for all women in their childbearing years.  Altogether, about 18 percent of women, or one of every six females, become teen mothers, and in several southern and southwestern states, this percentage is as high as 25–30 percent (Perper & Manlove, 2009).

The birth rate for females aged 15–19 in 2009 was 39.1 births per 1,000 females. This rate represented a substantial decline from the early 1990s when the rate reached a peak of almost 60. However, it was still twice as high as Canada’s rate and much higher yet than other Western democracies (Figure 6.4).

Figure 6.4 Teenage Birth Rates in Selected Western Democracies

Teenage pregnancies pose special problems (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 2011; Anderson, 2011). Pregnant teenagers are at higher risk than pregnant adults for high blood pressure and anemia, early labor, premature birth, low birth weight, and STIs.

Many pregnant teenagers decide to drop out of school. If they stay in school, they often must deal with the embarrassment of being pregnant, and the physical and emotional difficulties accompanying their teenage pregnancy can affect their school performance. Once the baby is born, child care typically becomes an enormous problem, whether or not the new mother is in school. Because pregnant teenagers disproportionately come from families that are poor or near-poor, they have few financial resources and often have weak social support networks, either before or after the baby is born (Andrews & Moore, 2011).

The children of teenage parents are at risk for several kinds of behavioral and developmental problems. Teenage parents may be unprepared emotionally or practically to raise a child and may receive less cognitive stimulation and proper emotional support. In addition, the stress they experience as young parents puts them at risk of neglecting or abusing their children. Teenage parents also tend to come from low-income families and continue to live in poverty or near poverty after they become parents, which compounds all of these risks.

Comprehensive sex education is based on the strategy of harm reduction. A harm reduction approach recognizes that because certain types of harmful behavior are inevitable, our society should do its best to minimize the various kinds of harm that these various behaviors generate. In regard to teenage sex and pregnancy, a harm reduction approach has two goals: (1) to help reduce the risk for pregnancy among sexually active teens and (2) to help teenage parents and their children.

Parents, sex education classes, family planning clinics, youth development programs, and other parties must continue to emphasize the importance of waiting to have sex but also the need for teenagers to use contraception if they are sexually active. In addition, effective contraception (birth control pills, other hormonal control, and even condoms, which protect against STIs) must be made available for teenagers at little or no cost. Studies indicate that these two contraception strategies do not lead to more teenage sex, and they also indicate that consistent contraceptive use dramatically reduces the risk of teenage pregnancy. As one writer has summarized these studies’ conclusions, “Contraceptives no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain…When contraception is unavailable, the likely consequences is not less sex, but more pregnancy” (Kristof, 2011, p. A31).

Because teen pregnancies occur despite the best prevention efforts, the second goal of a harm reduction approach is to help teens during their pregnancy and after childbirth. This strategy has the immediate aim of providing practical and emotional support for these very young mothers; it also has the longer-term goals of reducing repeat pregnancies and births and of preventing developmental and behavior problems among their children.