Herbal Health

Until recently, because of the influence of Freud, it was believed that once a child had found its gender-identity it entered a period of sexual latency which lasted until puberty. It was reluctantly accepted that small children were sexual in so far as they enjoyed fondling their genitals and in masturbating, although it was doubted if the child perceived this activity as erotic. But it was believed that by the end of its fifth year a child entered a period of sexual latency, because, by that stage of its development, a boy had repressed his guilt for desiring his mother sexually and had resolved his fear that his father could retaliate by cutting off the boy’s penis. Having resolved the so-called Oedipal conflict, the child’s sexuality ceased. ‘During this lull period,’ Freud wrote, ‘it is at a standstill and much is unlearnt and there is much recession. After the end of the period of latency, as it is called, sexual life advances once more with puberty.’

It is now known that there is no latent sexual period. With the widening variety of experiences, the child’s interest moves away from obtaining pleasure by fondling its genitals, but masturbation continues throughout childhood, and in some cultures sexual intercourse takes place.

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Theory 2

The second theory rejects Freudian psychosexual psychology, and believes that sexual identity is formed by copying, but that a boy child, for example, copies his father initially because of some ‘innate’ tendency towards being a male, perhaps due to the effects of pre-natal testosterone. Once the child forms the identity-link with his father (or some other male), he models his behaviour on his father’s, so that he can obtain his father’s love and approval. In this theory a child learns his gender-identity in the way he learns about other concepts. He learns that a furry object with a small face and four legs, which purrs, is called a kitten. He learns more about the kitten as he hears other people talking about it, and as he observes how it drinks milk. He learns even more by playing with it.

By the age of 2, a child has learnt to identify a large and increasing number of objects, but is still learning to identify men and women, boys and girls, by the way they look, by what they wear, by the way their hair is cut, by the absence or presence of hair on their faces, and by watching and listening to them as they discuss each other. In other words, he identifies that men and women, boys and girls, tend to have different appearances and to do different things, or the same things in a different way. He learns that women stay at home, look after children, cook, keep houses tidy, shop, gossip, and are likely to cuddle him. He contrasts this with the observations that men -including his father – do not stay at home, go out more, work, do certain things involving strength and power (like putting out the rubbish, cutting the lawn, or being soldiers and policemen), and are less likely to cuddle him. He is learning that people have gender-roles, but he has not yet learned that he has a gender-identity. That comes a little later.

In this theory, the child learns how to behave sexually by observation and imitation in the same way he learns other social behaviours.

Any child observing the behaviour of others (‘models’) can take one of three actions. It can ignore the behaviour; it can imitate it; or it can behave differently. Children tend to imitate if they see the ‘model’ as similar to themselves, or as powerful, or as friendly, or as someone who will reward them. If the ‘model’ is seen to have all these attributes, the child will imitate; the fewer the attributes, the greater the chance that it will behave in an opposite way.

A boy child tends to copy male figures because he perceives them as similar to him and as powerful, and this copying is reinforced by the behaviour to him of his parents, other adults, and other children. Parents encourage him to imitate his father and discourage him from imitating his mother.

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In the 1950s a number of doctors treated pregnant women, who were threatening to abort, with drugs called ‘gestagens’ (they are also called progestins). These drugs, which are derived from a synthetic substance resembling testosterone, were given because they were thought to act in a similar way to the natural female sex hormone, progesterone. It was thought, erroneously as it happened, that progesterone and consequently the gestagens would prevent the abortion from occurring. The drug was given by injection, from the 7th or 8th week of pregnancy, often twice weekly for as long as 20 weeks. A number of female children born to these treated mothers were found at birth to have external genitals which resembled those of a boy.

At the same time another group of girls was identified. These children had a genetic defect of their adrenal glands. Because the glands lacked a specific enzyme, the girls were unable to manufacture cortisone in their adrenal glands. Instead, they manufactured the male hormone, testosterone. Testosterone circulated in their body almost from the time they were embryos, and altered the appearance of their external genitals to resemble those of a boy. The girls had a rudimentary penis or, more accurately, an enlarged clitoris, and an apparent scrotum.

Over a period of years, Dr John Money and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, U.S.A., have been interested in these two groups of children. After birth, when their correct sex was diagnosed, they required treatment. The girls whose mothers had been given the gestagens in pregnancy usually needed surgery to remove their enlarged clitoris. The girls with the adrenal gland defect needed surgery to remove the big clitoris and cortisone pills to enable them to survive. Both groups of children were reared as girls by their parents, as this was their genetic sex.

When they were between 10 and 14 years old, Dr Money thought that he would try to find out how their behaviour compared with that of matched ‘normal’ girls (matched, that is, for age, socioeconomic background, and I.Q.).

He compared the behaviour of twenty-five affected girls with that of twenty-five normal girls, and found that the affected girls used more energy than normal girls, were judged to be more tomboyish (by adults), preferred what were considered to be boys’ toys – guns and toy cars – rather than those usually thought of as girls’ toys, and had a higher I.Q. Most were indifferent to dolls.

Dr Money’s work suggested that pre-natal testosterone increased a child’s intelligence, her energy, and her tomboyishness. These findings have been criticized on several counts. First, the normal girls he used may not have been good ‘controls’. The mothers who had been given the gestagens, and who had seen their child’s ‘abnormal’ genitals, may have had different expectations of their child, and may have behaved differently to the child. Alternatively, they may have been more anxious about how the child would develop, and may have over-compensated for this anxiety by being more indulgent.

Second, when the intelligence of the affected girl’s parents and that of her brothers or sisters was tested by two of Dr Money’s colleagues, they found that the affected girl was no more intelligent than anyone else in the family.

Three subsequent studies of the children of mothers given gestagens have also failed to find any increased intelligence among them when tested at various ages up to the age of 16.

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