Now let us assume that we are past the initial impression stage and things are beginning to progress. Based on first impressions a woman might think, ‘He’s a bit thick but I fancy him, so I’ll pretend to be thick too so he won’t be put off. Armed with the ‘knowledge’ that Western men do not like their women to be brighter than they are themselves, she puts herself down because he seems unintelligent. The man will unconsciously alter his behaviour to come into line with what he feels she expects and the charade gets off the ground.

Many men think that women most respect and enjoy the company of dominant men and one survey found that girls certainly are attracted to competent men. But if men tried to overcome their incompetence by being dominant, the women found them more unattractive. The most appealing men were those who were competent and dominant. It does seem to be the case that men who have power and are good at what they do are very attractive to women.

So now our two individuals are talking and eyeing each other up. The main thing they are doing is making character and personality judgements, but they are also trying to find out if the other likes them. Similarly, nods, eye-to-eye contact and positive body language all help to build up a positive or negative picture. Some people are good at reading these tell-tales and build on them at once but others are very bad at it. If a girl finds a boy attractive there are common give-aways. She may, for example, tend to look into his eyes momentarily and then look away, she may blush, or she may giggle at the slightest joke or teasing.

The way we interpret these signs varies according to our mood from day to day. Studies have shown that aroused men (who had just read some sexy material) were more likely to see a girl as sexually attractive and receptive than were unaroused men. So we could meet someone on one day and be unaffected by them and then meet them again in a different and more receptive mood and really hit it off.

*24\164\2*

Late adolescence ends around the age of twenty to twenty-one in girls but not until twenty-three in boys and for some well beyond that. It is succeeded by young adulthood. In this stage young women usually become less apprehensive about themselves, probably because of the confidence gained as a result of earlier successes (even if the relationship did not last) with men. They appear, in general, to be more philosophical and more capable of taking a long-term view of the future. In general, too, their relationship with their mother improves and most mothers appear willing to accept their daughter as an autonomous person.

Poor relationships between a father and his son can reach crisis proportions in late adolescence and early adulthood, as the son begins to feel more self-assured. Where it continues at a vicious level it is often found that Oedipal factors are still at work in the son and that his relationships with women are often disturbed.

As a part of the late-adolescent process, the individual changes his or her relationship with society. Criticism and idealism may find expression in political or religious activity but also in good works towards others. The childhood tendency to divide the world into goodies and baddies still recurs and may cloud judgement, but it recedes throughout adolescence except in the politically disturbed fraction of late adolescents and young adults. In the main there seems to be a working out — or not working out – of childhood grievances which are usually unconscious and elevated to some point of political principle which then has to be imposed on the whole community if possible.

Romanticism is still rife in late adolescence but it is to be hoped that it is tempered a little by reason in early adulthood. Equally, it is to be hoped that it is never lost.

*19\164\2*

The first sign of puberty is nearly always the development of the breasts, often one, the left, before the other. At about the age of eleven but sometimes as early as eight or as late as thirteen, mounds appear and the areola, the pigmented area around the nipple enlarges. Up to this time the sensitivity of the area is roughly equal in boys and girls but in girls it now begins to increase. Full breast development takes about two and a half years. Depending on her personal and family attitudes and those of her friends, a girl will either welcome or conceal these changes.

Pubic hair development normally starts a few months after the breasts begin to develop but can start before. A few girls, perhaps because of guilt about masturbation, believe that hair growth is a sign of abnormality or even a sign of changing sex and so may cut it or shave it off. Around this time the vagina starts to produce an increased amount of whitish, acidic fluid.

Coinciding with, or just before, these changes, the girl experiences a physical growth spurt. This reaches a peak soon after the pubic hair begins to appear, and then the rate of growth begins to slacken. About two and a half years after the first signs of breast development, menstruation first occurs.

Many women say they were never warned in advance about their periods starting, but most mothers say they prepared their daughters. This apparent contradiction can be explained. Because the subject concerns sex and because the mother has unwittingly inspired anxiety in relation to sex over the childhood years, her daughter does not want to know and banishes the information from her consciousness even though she has in fact been given it.

Whatever the explanation, a girl’s first period can be a shock which leads to fears of injury or illness. Depending again upon environmental attitudes some girls welcome their first period while others are ashamed. All girls probably worry to some degree about their lack of control over the event. Earlier, hard-won mastery over the other body functions in childhood now seems to be partly lost and many worry about the shame they might feel if they ever leaked blood, making their period obvious to others.

The average age at which a girl’s first period occurs is probably one measure of the affluence of a society, and in the West it has been falling for centuries. The link with affluence is food. The better nourished a population the earlier the girls start to menstruate. In fact girls that are over-nourished start even earlier. This is a good case for staying slim. The decline has reached its lowest limit so far in the generation of girls born in the years immediately after the Second World War. The first period now usually occurs at about thirteen years, but may be as early as eleven or as late as fifteen and still be quite normal. Various factors can affect the age of onset, blind girls tending to start early, whereas girls living at a high altitude or those who have younger brothers usually start late.

A girl can become pregnant before her first period but most girls are infertile for the first year or so of having periods because they are not yet ovulating (producing eggs). After this there is a slow build-up towards maximum fertility in the early twenties.

Early periods may be prolonged, heavy or irregular. Signs that a girl is becoming fertile are regular and predictable periods, especially if they are accompanied by premenstrual symptoms such as breast tenderness or pain and painful periods.

Hair usually begins to appear in the armpits at about the time of the first period. The onset of all these changes of puberty varies from girl to girl and any one girl may not follow the usual sequence. The whole process can take from one to five years to complete.

Along with these specific sexual changes, fat is deposited under the skin, making a girl’s contours more plump and rounded. This makes her body sexually attractive to men. At this stage many girls are confused by their feelings. They have impulses both to show and to conceal their bodies but by the end of early adolescence they have usually come to terms with their emerging sexuality. Under hormonal influences their interest in sex heightens. A girl’s desire to grow up and be treated as a woman is exciting to her but also fear-inspiring, giving her a simultaneous desire to remain in, or regress to, childhood as a form of escape from the realities of impending womanhood. Other contradictions arise from the fact that she has a need to be seen by males as desirable whilst at the same time fearing she might not be acceptable to them or that she may appear brazen or cheap.

As a result of these feelings early adolescence is often stressful for a girl. Unlike the early adolescent boy, her entry into the sexual arena is dramatic and swift. Because her biological drives are so strong, her parents are often concerned and this can lead to family conflict towards the end of early adolescence. Her earlier good relationship with her father may worsen as he tries to control her comings and goings but the cruellest battle is often fought with her mother. In some families these rows can become very bitter with the father physically punishing the girl and the mother accusing her of being a whore.

Many, perhaps most, girls openly rebel at some stage and tell their mothers that they hate them. If the parents ‘win’, the girl’s subsequent development may be impaired, but the greater danger is that the girl may feel she can win by running away or having early intercourse simply to spite her parents. Many experts in this field believe that girls who behave like this are simply seeking love from a man to replace the parental love they have lost but others believe that much more often it comes about because a girl wants to punish her mother.

So the answer for parents of early-adolescent girls is to try to understand their desires and fears and to do all they can to cope with the situation without reaching a stage of open warfare. The best plan is simply to keep the channels of communication open.

With her many conflicts and bodily changes it is easy to see why the early-adolescent girl can be so moody and changeable. It is also fairly obvious why many girls fail in the tasks of early adolescence. The origins of a lot of mental ill health in women can be traced back to early adolescence as can an inability to cope with the female role. Some girls opt out by becoming fat or by developing anorexia nervosa, thus regressing, Peter Pan-like, to childhood, ceasing to menstruate and losing their breasts. Others become over-devoted to academic work, to religion, or to animals. Some girls act out their distress and become sexually delinquent and other try to seduce an older man who is sometimes the exact opposite to their father. Others, especially those who had a poor relationship with their mothers in early childhood, may secretly wish to return to childhood and ‘solve’ the problem but over-react in the opposite direction and rush into ‘adult’ pursuits such as sex and drink.

Early adolescence is the time when a girl accepts, or fails to accept, that she is a sexual being. This involves much more than simply realising that she will eventually have intercourse and possibly babies. She has to accept that she has sexual interests, wishes, desires and pleasures and that her life will never be the same again. She has now entered the sexual arena and has to take her chances with the rest of us.

*14\164\2*

If all goes well with the anal stage, anal interests and pleasures slowly become secondary to phallic pleasures, around the age of three years. This is the phallic stage. In this stage the clitoris or penis increasingly becomes the predominant source of body pleasure. More or less deliberate masturbation usually starts now. Most parents say either that their child did not masturbate or, if the child did so, that they accepted it. Clinical evidence suggests that this is usually not true.

The phallic stage is in one sense the start of heterosexual love and an early childhood step towards independence from the parents but it is nearly always suppressed, if not by direct prohibition and punishment then by disapproval and distraction. Very few parents are sufficiently at ease with their own sexuality to be able to watch their young child play with his or her genitals. In some families the genitals are never mentioned or even acknowledged as existing. Anything without a name probably does not exist for a child of this age, so simply by not talking about a child’s genitals as you would about any other part of the body you are expressing a negative attitude which undoubtedly influences the child’s future feelings and behaviour. This is unmentionable sex and girls particularly suffer in this way.

In most families the genitals are given names — often of a comic type. Playing with the genitals can be condemned in the same way as was the interest in bowel motions and sex then becomes dirty sex. Religiously inclined families may suggest that God does not like this genital play and sex becomes sinful sex. Direct punishment can associate the phallic stage with fear and so sex becomes fearful sex. Some children are still warned of physical ill effects from genital touching and so sex can become unhealthy sex. Girls especially are rebuked on the basis that such practices are not ‘nice’ in girls and so sex becomes nasty sex.

Similar techniques are sometimes used to turn sex into a matter of shame, extreme privacy and embarrassment. This is shameful sex. To a greater or lesser extent everyone in our culture encounters all these reactions, if not from their parents then from other sources, and if not in the phallic stage, then later. These attitudes are continuously reinforced, however unconsciously, throughout childhood and adolescence in most families.

Somewhat surprisingly, clinical evidence strongly suggests that most of these suppressions are put over to the child in unconscious ways by parents, who are therefore not being consciously untruthful when they say they did not suppress their child’s sexuality. What was taught to them, the parents, in this way in childhood they in turn pass on to the next generation. The child stores the information away, mainly in the unconscious mind, so the transaction is between the unconscious of the parents and the unconscious of the child. This accounts for our cultural conservatism over sexual matters.

The results of sexual suppression in the phallic stage seem to be more serious for girls. This may be because they are more heavily suppressed. Mothers are generally much more indulgent towards genitality in boys than in girls. This subject is considered in more detail. Here it suffices to say that clinical experience seems to prove that the difficulties of a wide section of the adult female population in experiencing full sexual pleasure originates at this stage.

Before the phallic stage is reached a child has learned to distinguish between mummy and daddy and later between women and men. When very young he or she will have seen both parents and any brothers or sisters naked because few adults think such matters register on a young child. The young child may even have been present in the room when his or her parents were having intercourse and if so, according to some people, his or her behaviour over the next few days may show signs of disturbance. Later, witnessing or hearing intercourse can lead to the notion that sex is an aggressive and sadistic act and many children fear that their father is hurting their mother, especially if she is noisy when she has an orgasm. This is why it is probably best in our culture not to let children of any age see their parents having intercourse. Some phobias are thought to be triggered off in susceptible children who repeatedly witness or overhear parental sexual acts after the age of about two or three.

Parental nudity, which has always been more widespread amongst

the better educated, is of much less significance, especially if the child’s friends are being reared in the same sort of way, though a few psychosexual experts think that it is best for a boy not to see his mother naked after the age of four or so and for a girl not to see her father naked from about a year. Children whose friends are used to seeing their parents naked will probably be unaffected but children can be very cruel, even this young, and will tease children who seem to be brought up in ways that are contrary to the way they know. As children discuss this sort of thing at school it is probably best not to subject your child to experiences at home that will make them feel odd among their friends. They may believe that they have odd parents if their friends say so and this could be harmful to them.

A practical aspect of this stage in relation to boys is that only about 4 per cent of boys have a fully retractable foreskin at birth and 50 per cent by one year. Forcible attempts at retraction by some mothers, to clean underneath, to see whether circumcision is necessary or just to stretch it, may account for some late adolescent boys and men with tight foreskins who react with great alarm at any attempt at retraction. Their reluctance leads them to masturbate with the foreskin in the forward position and its development does not keep pace with the increase in size of the penis at puberty.

Little boys’ penises need nothing done to them at all. If the foreskin will not pull back completely by the age of five, see your doctor for advice.

As children begin to look at the genitals of children (and adults) of the opposite sex, boys may come to see girls as being boys who have had their genitals removed, perhaps as a punishment for touching them. Some fear a similar punishment themselves. Girls sometimes conjure up the idea that they really have a secret penis or seem, perhaps, to blame their mothers because they have not got one. The difficulty in such speculation is that children rarely say how they feel and their reactions can only be guessed at from their behaviour.

*9\164\2*

No. It’s a articles that, by increasing your insight and understanding of the whole subject of sexuality and love, should help you understand your own and your children’s complex emotions and feelings in situations as different as birth and breastfeeding; dealing with your pubertal daughter;-influencing your teenage son; wondering what to do about your child living with his or her boyfriend or girlfriend; reassessing marriage in general and your own in particular; sex problems within your marriage; worries about old age; and much, much more.

No one has the right to tell people what to do when it comes to bringing up their children but there are many errors that people make in this area. Clinical experience of dealing with these problems enables us to help the reader because he or she can learn from thousands of other people’s mistakes — hopefully before they make them themselves. It’s easy to say that there are no absolute rights or wrongs about family sexuality and that whatever you do your children will turn out all right but this simply isn’t true. None of us can hope to bring up perfect human beings but we can do our very best to reduce negative influences by a little informed thought – and care. Whatever happens in the formal world of sex education the majority of influences on a child (and therefore on that person as an adult) come from his or her parents. Because of this we owe it not only to our children but also to their spouses and children to get things as right as we can in the first twenty years or so of their lives.

*4\164\2*

Related Posts:

• GAMES FOR HYSTERICAL COUPLES – GAME 5: TALK DIRTY TO ME (INTRODUCTION)
• GAMES FOR DEPRESSED COUPLES – GAME 4: HOPELESS SEX (PART 3)
• GAMES FOR PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE COUPLES – GAME 3: NUDE HAMLET (PART 1)
• GAMES FOR BORED COUPLES – GAME 1: SEDUCTION SURPRISE (BY THE WIFE) (PART 3)
• JUNK SEX VS. LOVING SEX – INTRODUCTION
• PROSTATITIS
• GENITAL ANATOMY: SCROTUM
• PROSTATE CANCER
• MALE ANATOMY: PENIS
• BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA (BPH)