1462 



HORMONAL REGULATION OF BEHAVIOR 



baby while the wife was segregated with a 

 new child, as learned behavior. 



As long as the infant was dependent upon 

 human milk for nutriment, there was in all 

 societies a biologically given situation which 

 differentiated male infancy from female in- 

 fancy. The male spent the first prewalking 

 period in the care of a member of the op- 

 posite sex, the female in the care of a mem- 

 ber of the same sex. The invention of arti- 

 ficial infant feeding is a social interference 

 with this biologically given but not biologi- 

 cally inevitable situation, the conseciuences 

 of which we as yet know little about, be- 

 cause our social institutions still bear the 

 stamp of the earlier condition. 



It may then be said that the strongly 

 grounded institution of infants being cared 

 for by women, and during their early 

 months by lactating women, is almost uni- 

 versal. Isolated case histories of children 

 reared in institutions (Bowlby, 1951 ) and 

 the adult responses of males reared by 

 nurses of different racial or ethnic origin 

 (Bollard, 1937) suggest that contact with 

 a protecting female during this period may 

 be crucial in setting up the later adult pat- 

 terns of sexual preference and initiative. 



The second stage of dependent lactation, 

 when the child still has very limited mobil- 

 ity but has teeth capable of inflicting pain 

 on his mother's breast, also provides re- 

 current situations in which attitudes to- 

 ward pain and self-restraint, attack, and 

 fear of retaliation can be set up. These, 

 if carried over into the later development of 

 sex behavior, could (in the case of aberrant 

 individuals in a society which disapproves 

 of such behavior) become the basis for 

 sadomasochist perversions equivalent to a 

 reproductive disability (Hutchinson, 1959). 

 Alternatively, a culture may institutionalize 

 the learning of this stage in a permitted 

 repetitive foreplay style, in which scratching 

 and biting are regarded as the appropriate 

 precursors of sexual intercourse between 

 man and wife (Mundugumor, Mead, 1935; 

 Trobriands, Malinowski, 1929). 



The prewalking stages, necessarily inter- 

 personal, provide in the relationship be- 

 tween mother and child a prefiguration of 

 adult sex behavior: interpersonal, in the 

 relationship between nipple and mouth; 

 complementary, in a "learning in reverse" 



for the male who as an adult will have to 

 substitute an intrusive initiatory act for an 

 introceptive act; a direct learning for the 

 female, whose adult sex response must also 

 be introceptive (Mead, 1949b; Erikson, 

 1950). With mobility, the child's interest is 

 shifted to control over the physical environ- 

 ment, to a variety of tasks which are non- 

 interpersonal. Eating is no longer a direct 

 physical relationship with another human 

 l)eing, but a relationship between the self 

 and a nutritive object, banana, bone, piece 

 of taro root, which the mother gives. The 

 child also learns control over the giving 

 and withholding of his excretions. This pe- 

 riod, itself universal, is utilized differently 

 by different cultures. In some, it is the 

 model of all human relationships: copula- 

 tion is regarded as a necessary form of ex- 

 cretion of substances which would otherwise 

 l)ile up inside the body (Manus, Mead, 

 1930; American, Mead, 1949b) ; patterns of 

 sex behavior stress a close identification 

 between reproductive and excretory func- 

 tions and attendant and appropriate habits 

 of thrift, self-control, withholding, etc., de- 

 velop. 



The third stage of human childhood is the 

 one in which the child's behavior would 

 seem to be leading directly to sexual ma- 

 turity, if it is compared with the behavior 

 of young primates. This is the age roughly 

 from 4 to 6, when the young male engages 

 in I'ough experimental play with age mates, 

 is actively interested in phallic display and 

 in the assertive intrusive manner and voice 

 which re-inforce phallic display. The female 

 child displays a high degree of sexual self- 

 consciousness in response to males, espe- 

 cially older males. A significant aspect of this 

 early development is the tremendous dis- 

 crepancy in size and degree of maturation 

 between the small, sexually conscious male, 

 who is ready to fight for an adult female 

 (usually his mother) , and the adult male 

 whose sexual rights he would invade. If 

 evolution had proceeded in an even line, 

 it might have been expected that human 

 males would be mature by 8 or 9, ready to 

 take on the demands of adult sexuality. Oc- 

 casionally, in a primitive society, one finds 

 traces of this behavior. Among the cannibal- 

 istic, head-hunting Mundugumor (Mead, 

 1935) , son and father are rivals for the sister 



