Masturbation

My little children hove begun to indulge in genital play with each other and with the children next door. I have scolded and spanked them. How con I stop them?

All children have genital play at one time or another— usually with guilt because parents make sex play a sin because of the adults’ own guilt about sex. How many im­potent men and frigid women owe their misery to early punishment for sex play? Wise parents leave children be, and ignore sex play; wiser parents will smile and approve.

If children tickled each others noses, parents would smile. What is wrong about genital tickling? Why are the sex organs heinous? Sex is here to stay; sex gives pleasure. Such is the arrangement of Nature to insure the continu­ance of the human animal.

When sex play is approved of by parents, the child does not get fixated on this one source of pleasure. But the best way to make masturbation a guilty complex to be carried on into adulthood is to label masturbation as evil and dirty. A child who masturbates or who has sex play with parental approval has the best chance later on of be­coming a good lover—a lover who exhibits tenderness and joy. The universal sex misery largely stems from parental anti-sex. If you do not believe that the sexual misery is with us, read the Kinsey reports, a revelation of hypocrisy.

Now and then, my boy of five indulges in masturbation. He has never been restrained by myself or by my husband. He has no sense of wrongdoing or shame. At times, to the embarrassment of myself and my husband, he may play with himself in front of company. How should this be han­dled?

Under similar circumstances, a psychologist friend of mine said to his boy of six: “Tommy, your mother and I like you to play with your wee-wee, hut you shouldn’t do it when strangers are around because they think it’s wrong to play with your wee-wee. We don’t. So play with your wee-wee as much as you like, and as often as you like when we are alone and there’s no company around.”

Maybe a boy of five would not have the sophistication to grasp this, but it should be tried.

My little daughter of four frequently indulges in genital play. I understand that this is quite usual for a boy, but isn’t this abnormal for a girl?

Genital play is as common among little girls as it is among little boys, only it is not so easily noticed. Little girls sometimes rub themselves against the edge of a table, or get a sex sensation riding a rocking horse, or underneath the bedclothes they simply tickle the vagina.

A wise mother will never interfere.

NUDITY

My husband and I feel very strongly about the sanctity and dignity of the human body. We do not feel that we have to hide our bodies behind clothes. We have made it a prac­tice to walk around the house nude. Some of my friends tell me that bringing up a child in an atmosphere of nudity can arouse unfavorable sexual reactions. Do you think so? Do you see any harm in my boy of 11 and his sisters of two and nine seeing each other’s nakedness?

Dear lady, why listen to your anti-life friends? They have sex complexes; to them sex is dirty and bad.

“Unfavorable sexual reactions!” What do your friends mean? What is unfavorable about sex? Ignore your neigh­bors, lady. Ignore the dead. Nudity in a home is excellent, natural.

Your children will avoid so much sick sex later on; it’s inconceivable that any of them will become a Peeping Tom; they will have seen all there is to see. Unlike so many re­pressed adolescents, they will not laugh obscenely when a breast, a brassiere, a toilet bowl, or a woman’s thigh is shown on the movie screen.