Archives of Sexual Behavior

, Volume 44, Issue 4, pp 1059–1069 | Cite as

How Children Learn About Sex: A Cross-Species and Cross-Cultural Analysis

Original Paper
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Abstract

Scattered and not widely disseminated evidence from primatology, anthropology, and history of childhood sexuality support the hypothesis that throughout much of human behavioral evolution that human children have learned about sex through observing parental sexuality and then imitating it in sexual rehearsal play with peers. Contemporary theories of psychosexual development have not considered the possibility that young children are predisposed to learn about sex through observational learning and sexual rehearsal play during early childhood, a primate-wide trait that is conserved in humans but suppressed in contemporary contexts.

Keywords

Childhood sexuality Psychosexual development Sex education Childhood sex play 
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© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological StudiesAdelphi UniversityGarden CityUSA

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