During this period of early childhood, children learn that the genitals are different from the rest of the body. They remain covered up, at least in public, and touching or playing with them is either discouraged or to be done only in private. This is the beginning of the sense of secrecy surrounding sexuality. Children are usually taught about their genitals in order to teach them about elimination, not sexuality, and young children often confuse eliminative and sexual functions (Chilman, 1983).
As we discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, children this age rarely learn the anatomically correct names for their genitals. In one study, young children knew the correct anatomical terms for body parts like eyes, arms, and legs, but only 6.3% knew the term “penis” and only 3% “vagina” (Wurtele et al., 1992). Children are easily capable of learning the correct terminology when taught at home by their parents. Why is it that we teach our children the correct names for all the body parts except their genitalia? What message do you think it might send children when we use cute play words like “dinkle” or “pid — dlewiddle” for their genital organs?
In our culture, boys are taught very early a name for their focus of sexual pleasure, the penis, but girls rarely are taught about the focus of their sexual pleasure, the clitoris. Typically, girls are often taught incorrect terminology for their genitals, which in turn discourages them from learning more about their sexuality (Ogletree & Ginsburg, 2000). Boys often know more sexual words than girls, even though girls, in general, have larger vocabularies than boys (Bem, 1989). In addition, the appearance of the penis seems to fascinate both girls and boys, and although boys tend to be relatively uninterested in girls’ genitals, girls are quite interested in boys’ penises (Gundersen et al., 1981). Parents must make an extra effort to introduce girls to their genital anatomy. One mother was dismayed when her 6-year-old daughter commented about her 2-year-old brother and asked, “Why does he have such a nice big thing there and I have a boring nothing?” (Author’s files).