The Control of Childhood Sexuality: A Victorian Perspective

The Control of Child Sexuality: A Victorian Perspective The focal point of parent-child conflict in the Victorian period was child sexuality. Parents sought to quash child sexuality with rigid moral injunctions, threats of punishment and physical restraints. The newly triumphant bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century imposed a severely restrictive sexual morality.  René Spitz surveyed 559 works relating to the causes, effects and controls of masturbation throughout history and concluded that in the late nineteenth century a decisive change in emphasis occurred. Physicians abandoned bland diets and counseling and turned to more sadistic methods. The procedures recommended by doctors during the years 1850-1879 involved surgical operations: punitive circumcision, male and female infibulation. A London surgeon, Isaac Baker Brown, developed the operation of clitoridectomy in 1858 to treat cases of what he judged to be excessive masturbation. Between 1880 and 1904 various restraining devices were used as control methods. Physicians performed clitoridectomy operations on girls in the United States until the 1920’s. Parents intruded their anxious moralizing into the most intimate biological and emotional processes of their children in order to curb possible sources of sexual excitationChildren’s diets were carefully controlled to exclude any spicy foods thought to arouse erotic impulses. Bowels were carefully watched because constipation was thought to be one of the causes of masturbation. Parents adopted strict sleeping regimens that did not allow children to be in bed long before falling asleep or after awakening. Horseback and bicycle riding were curtailed for girls as it was thought that it would generate masturbatory impulses from the rhythmic friction. Little boys bathing on the outskirts of town were hunted down by  policemen who were “infuriated by the site of a naked body, even of childhood.” Child’s reading was carefully regulated and many works of art in museums were believed to be dangerous. Moralists advised that boys’ trousers should be selected for shallow and widely separated pockets and mentioned that excitation could be caused by easy accessibility to closets, perfumes, furs or rocking chairs. Thus parents, under the guise of rooting out potential causes of masturbatory activity, could meddle in every aspect of a child’s life.  For the child who persisted in masturbating despite the more subtle preventative efforts of his or her parents, the Victorians resorted to force. Hands were tied down at night. An elaborate corset restricted access to the genitals by holding a metal cup over the genitals. Rings were installed around the penis to prevent erection. One gadget awakened young men with an electric bell. For the incorrigible surgical techniques were used: blistering of the penis, and for female masturbators, surgical removal of the clitoris.  By 1890, alarmed commentators observed that child suicide appeared to to be rising sharply. The most commonly mentioned motive for suicide in childhood was fear of punishment, with shame running a close second. In 1891 Franz Scholz listed four causes of child suicide: misery of family life, shame, bad conscience, and fear of punishment. Freud fully elaborated his theory of the Oedipus complex in 1905. Patients were coming to him emotionally and even physically crippled by “pathological defense structures generated by severe sexual repression reinforced by family pressure.”  Sources: Kern, Stephen. 1973. Explosive intimacy: psychodynamics of the Victorian family. History of Childhood Quarterly 1:437-461. Further Reading: Dubois, Jean D. Circa 1890? The secret habits of the female sex; letters addressed to a mother on the evils of solitude, and its seductive temptations to young girls, the premature victims of a pernicious passion ... entailing disease and death ... From the French of Jean Dubois, M.D New York, J.H. Farrell  Duffy, John. 1963. Masturbation and clitoridectomy. Journal of the American Medical Association Tissot, S.A.D. (Samuel Auguste David 1728-1797). 1985. Onanism / S.A. Tissot. Nymphomania / D.T. de Bienville. New York: Garland Pub.

Index

Primates	Victorian England	Azande-Congo	Hill Maria-India	Nuba-Sudan
Nuba-Otoro	Nuba-Koalib	Marquesas Islanders	Child Marriage: India	Irish Village