The development of sexuality: The impact of childhood sexual play on adult sexuality.
Reynolds, Meredith Ann
1997
Abstract
This dissertation is a preliminary investigation of childhood sexuality designed to gain insight into the prevalence, nature, and long-term consequences of childhood sexual play. Based on a mediation model, the impact of childhood sexual play experiences on features of adult sexuality was examined via their influence on cognitive representations of sexuality, or sexual self-concept. Two groups of adults, 59 college students randomly selected to participate in this study from a midwestern university subject pool and 73 volunteers from the community who responded to an advertisement soliciting subjects for a sexuality study, comprised the sample. Subjects completed questionnaires providing retrospective reports and evaluations of childhood sexual play experiences and features of adult sexuality including variety, frequency, and quality of sexual experiences, and current involvement in a sexual relationship. Additionally, subjects completed the Sexual Self-Concept Inventory, a new instrument designed to assess dimensions of cognitive representations of sexuality. The results of this research support the contention that childhood sexual play is an extremely wide-spread and hence normative experience. While some of these experiences were negative, particularly those involving coercion and being caught by an adult who responded negatively, the majority were evaluated positively by both subjects and judges. There were no gender differences in self-reported frequency of engaging in sexual play as a child, nor in the self-reported ratings of the quality of these experiences. However, judges rated female sexual play experiences slightly less favorably than males, and females reported more negative reactions by adults upon being caught engaging in sexual play. Results for the combined samples support the mediation hypothesis of the impact of sexual play on later sexuality. Generally speaking, the relations between childhood sexual play and adult sexual outcomes were substantially reduced when general sexual self-concept was considered as a mediating variable. These results held for the college sample, but not the community sample, when they were evaluated separately. Additionally, the results provide preliminary evidence for both the validity and reliability of the Sexual Self-Concept Inventory and for the model of cognitive representations of sexuality on which it is based.Subjects
Adult Childhood Development Impact Play Sexual Sexuality
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