Growing up in the twentieth century personally means I was exposed to a lot of information and almost equal ignorance. And an overwhelming amount of opinions. Unfortunately; I never always got answers to the questions I had. Like what is wrong with being friendly with people in the city? Why do politicians keep getting back into office when they suck in those positions? Why do people insist on institutional education when most geniuses don’t do well in walls? Why is child sexuality not even talked about?

Yes, child sexuality. The dimension that is usually ignored of a child; even stifled when it arises. Sexuality is a human aspect we’re born with; not taught or acquired. Children can thus have sexuality and for some, this aspect matures early in their lives. Sigmund Freud is best known for his theory that human actions as children are mirrored in adulthood; especially in sexual terms. However, this isn’t what led me to have this question. Personal experience did.

Children can have sex before they hit puberty. It’s been documented and reported, incidences of children aged 9 and even 6 having sexual activity and God knows how much younger considering the scope of the report didn’t include infants under six years. This is reported as a problem; but rarely with reason. Explanations given majorly centre around the fact that physically mature adults are the only people on earth who have the right and maturity of having sex. Even teenage sex is frowned upon; yet they have sex and news headlines occasionally scream of the indecency and wrongful marriage of an eight year old to a far older man. Research into the basic reason why child sexual activity is most reprehensible to most in the world doesn’t delve up front with the connection between feeling good and sex.

Growing up, a child is introduced to various things that they usually attach emotions to. A scare at a high height may lead to fear of heights; pain accompanying bad behaviour usually leads to the behaviour not being repeated to avoid the pain; pleasantness of a hug at the joy of meeting with a loved one; soothing of a hug for comfort; formality of a handshake; joy in laughter... all these actions are identified as such by the emotions a child associates with them.

The good feelings that come with sex may screw up a child’s associations of feel-good sensations. Whereas people who weren’t exposed to sexual activity at a young age are able to connect certain actions with one running feeling; say joy with laughter and love and wonder; those exposed to sex at a young age replace the feel-good sensations that are usually platonic with sexual feelings. Imagine singing Praise and Worship in church? It is usually an exhilarating thing for most people in church but for those exposed to sexual activity at a young age; they associate the feeling with sex and hence have sexual feelings and thoughts coursing through them during such a service. See the problem?

Paedophiles know that children are curious and seek more pleasure than pain and hence use the pleasure of sex to lure and keep the child in sexual activity, even when they have outgrown that phase of being curious of their sexuality. Prolonging such a state may lead to an unhealthy fixation on sex. There was an article in the Daily Nation (a Kenyan Publication) where a child who’d been subjected to paedophilia was rescued from her defiler but even as the man was being prosecuted, the girl had acquired an obsession with sex, using sexual activity to feel good. The extent of the problem was dire in that she started using her siblings and fellow age mates to achieve the pleasure she sought through sexual activity. She was yet to hit teen hood. This is the problem the world seeks to hinder by disregarding child sexuality; even if the world intuitively knows it exists.

The basic thing that is instinctive in most people about sexual activity in children is that children need to grow up into their sexuality. They need to understand that not everything that feels good or bad is about sex. The experiences they are generally supposed to go through before they have sex are meant to show them that they can experience the same feeling under different circumstances; hence while exhilarated they can feel a sense of flying without feeling the reaction of sexual arousal; when in wonder they can relate the memory with an instance of wonder; say a spectacular meteor shower they first saw at eleven; not the sexual experience they had when they were five.

Is it really wrong to have sexual feelings as a child, then? Shouldn’t the world; with this information of child sexuality; be able to grasp the information and handle child sexuality differently than has been the trend; where children are kept in the dark about sex until they are teenagers and then made to feel (as in most cultures) that sex is a wrong, humiliating thing that is done for procreation and nothing more?

According to Allan Schwartz, LCSW PhD, children are polymorphous and known to have sexual feelings which eventually fade until teenage-hood. Some people are known to have guilt over having these emotions as children because as one is raised, there comes a point where they are told it is wrong to have sexual feelings at such a young age; usually early teen hood.

Opinions will vary as information such as this is spread around the world, some will reject it; others will accept it; others still will ignore it; some may even call it an abomination and expel the idea all together. However; shouldn’t the end result of this be handling of child sexuality? Shouldn’t the information enable people face sexuality without embarrassment; enable people to accept sexuality as a norm, a part of humanity that sure, has its place and time just like walking and puberty and not some mystic thing that one can live without?

Information of child sexuality should allow for discussion of sex with children mostly to inform them and protect them from predators. Parental units should use the information of child sexuality to understand certain behaviour is common; maybe even instinctive and possibly lead the world away from Victorian sentiments where exuberance and sex and other natures of humanity were disassociated from humans and covered up as something different so much that subsequent generations figured it was the norm and thus those with such natures on volume ten were odd and probably had something wrong with them.

Child sexuality shouldn’t be a problem. Abuse of child sexuality is.