Freud believed that children enter a sexual “latency” period after about age 6, when sexual issues remain fairly unimportant; they reemerge with the coming of puberty (see Chapter 2). The latency thesis may have been formulated because as the child matures, overt sexual behavior lessens. However, such behavior may lessen because it becomes less tolerated by parents and adults as the child grows older. For example, it is common to see a 3-year-old happily holding or stroking her genitals in public; such behavior would be shocking in a 9-year-old. Children are quickly socialized into correct sexual behaviors and learn to restrict them to moments of privacy (Friedrich et
al., 1991).
Most researchers disagree with Freud today; in fact, research seems to show that sexual interest and activity in societies across the world steadily increases during childhood. However, it appears that children engage in more “sexual” types of behaviors up until the age of 5 and then this behavior decreases. One study found that 2-year-old children of both sexes were more overtly sexual than were children in the 10- to 12-year-old range (Friedrich, 1998). Presumably this is due to the fact that children get better at hiding their sexual behaviors.