A word about sex with the same sex

Just as some adolescents get into sexual escapades in a mistaken effort to solve their problems, so do some turn away from sexual expression. Because of the shame and guilt inside them, they may try for one thing to keep sex out of their lives entirely. Or they may turn to members of the same sex to accept them with their sexual needs.

In the preadolescent period and in early adolescence, hero worship and crushes and adherence to friendships with members of the same sex are, as we know, quite in order. They seem to help a boy or girl make the transition from attachments to members of his own family to attachments outside his home.

Most children before adolescence at some time or another have had open sex play with children of the same sex. This is a far more common occurrence than most parents suspect and need not be taken as alarming. It is much as though two little like-sexed dogs were playing around with each other. Unless too much guilt or anxiety has built up, it ordinarily passes without having done any permanent harm.

Some boys and girls, as we've seen, may be slow in developing an interest in the opposite sex. They may be slow in their all-round maturing.

In general, the boy or girl who matures sooner physically will mature sooner socially and emotionally as well, and will evidence interest sooner than does the boy or girl who matures later.

Some boys may turn temporarily with the upsurge of sex feelings at this age to sexual experimentation with other boys. Some girls with other girls. If they are isolated from contacts with the opposite sex, this can readily happen. When contacts become more accessible, then boy-girl attractions are resumed. Keeping away any actual social or physical barriers to being with members of the opposite sex is therefore enormously important all through the adolescent years.

Timidity and hesitance about one's own attractiveness and worth-whileness may set up barriers to free-flowing contacts as surely as high walls or locked doors. Guilt and shame over one's body sensations add to timidity and a feeling of worthlessness. Relieving these may relieve the sense of blight that keeps a youngster apart from the opposite sex.

Parental disapproval and warnings, on the other hand, can fortify hesitance.

Take Winifred, for example. When she was fourteen, her mother said, beaming, "She's such a good, wholesome girl, my Winifred. Thank goodness she's not the type to go for lipstick or boys."

Two years went by without new developments. Winifred's mother looked seriously thoughtful. "Maybe," she apologized, "maybe my girl's a little slow."

Two years later, however, with the worry lines between her brows, she showed real concern. "Can't you please tell me what's wrong with Winifred? She's eighteen and she still scorns the make-up that the other girls around her wear. And I don't believe she knows that boys exist."

Then, with voice dropping, she brought out her great fear. "I've heard so much about homosexuality. If Winifred had any very good girl friends I'd be scared out of my wits. I guess I am anyway, because I understand that a person can have homosexual tendencies without these being openly expressed. Do you suppose they're what Winifred's got?"

Winifred's mother had heard or read that homosexuality could be expressed in open sex practices with members of the same sex. She had also come across the term "latent homosexuality," which means that so much of the person's emotions stay focused on the same sex that not enough of the sex urge is free to attach itself to members of the opposite sex. When development of sexual interests does not appear normally, this sort of halting of emotional development may be playing its part.

Homosexuality is not a physical abnormality. A person is not born with it. Various things may lie at the bottom of it, as, for instance, an exaggerated fear of making relationships with members of the opposite sex and fear fantasies that have become so intense as to halt emotional growth.

Trying to push the boy or girl into boy-girl contacts does little good. Trying to control the matter by lecturing, by threats or by punishment is not effective either. The problem is too complex and complicated. So is that of extreme solitariness or of "wildness." One is neither "worse" nor "better" than the others. They all show disturbances calling for help more skilled and impersonal than the parent is equipped to give.

As far as Winifred was concerned, it did not matter whether there was so-called "homosexuality" or some other basis for her difficulty. The natural interest which she should have had in boys was, for some reason, not in functioning order. This called for professional help just as do escapades which have gone too far. For the person who is trained to understand the language of the unconscious can help the child better to get at the hidden causes and release the fears and emotional disturbances which have either been holding him back or driving him on.

Meanwhile, let us move from these more serious problems to the everyday problems that you, as parents, want to be able to handle yourselves. Let us turn to boy-girl contacts--our major concern--and consider some of the very practical matters related to how your child acts in his early and middle teens. Let's look at some specific points about "dating" rules for him and at questions about you which may help to determine his response.