CULTURAL DETERMINANTS OF BEHAVIOR 



1463 



whom each wishes to exchange for a wife, 

 and a small boy of 7, backed up by his 

 mother, may defy his father if the father at- 

 temjits to exchange an older sister whom the 

 little boy has been taught is his property. 

 The spectacle of a child of this size defying 

 a grown man serves to emphasize the weak- 

 ness of the child whose size renders him 

 wholly unfit for sexual competition with 

 males whose protection and care he needs. 



However, this continuous maturation to- 

 ward sexual adequacy in both boys and girls 

 is interrupted during the long period of 

 childhood. The interruption gives children 

 a chance to grow to a size where a capacity 

 for procreation, rivalry with adult males, 

 and responsibility within society is possible 

 for the young males, and an appropriate 

 size for intercourse, child bearing, and social 

 responsibility is possible for young females. 

 Whether one considers the level of society 

 which could be maintained by children with 

 the degree of social maturation it is possible 

 to attain by the age of 6 or regards this as 

 an artificial consideration, because in such 

 a society learning would have been of a 

 completely different kind, there is still a 

 striking contrast between the level of social 

 maturation possible at 6 and at 18. In some 

 very simple societies, in submerged groups 

 in slums, or in some exploited labor groups, 

 small boys of 6 are virtually capable of 

 doing all (except producing and providing 

 for children) that is socially required of 

 males as herders, fishermen, hunters, casual 

 laborers, etc., although of course they lack 

 the physical strength of adults. And under 

 extreme conditions such as life among crimi- 

 nals or guerrillas or in concentration camps 

 (Freud, 1955), children of this age develop 

 an extraordinary maturity from which they 

 are normally protected in an orderly so- 

 ciety. 



Again citing the headhunting, cannibal- 

 istic Mundugumor, the keen and open 

 rivalry permitted between father and son 

 is interestingly enough acompanied by a 

 willingness to expose young children to the 

 terrors and rigors of life as lone hostages 

 in the villages of enemies who have become 

 temporary allies. The child is expected to 

 learn the language and the defenses of the 

 enemy for later use in warfare. 



■Much of the literature on sexual matura- 



tion in human beings, based as it is on com- 

 plex urban cultures, stresses the gap between 

 physical puberty and capacity for full social 

 participation as a complication of human 

 maturation and neglects this even more 

 striking sexual precocity which is attained 

 between 4 and 6 years of age. When early 

 sexuality was recognized by Freud, students 

 of sex in modern society developed a theory 

 that the period between the end of early 

 childhood and puberty was characterized 

 by what has been called "latency," a reces- 

 sion of sexual interest and drive (Fries, 

 1958). During this period, the child's phys- 

 ical energy is consumed in rapid growth 

 culminating in the prepubertal spurt, and 

 his attention is concentrated on the acquisi- 

 tion of physical and social skills that will 

 fit him to function in a human society. The 

 observation that all manifestations of sexu- 

 ality were heavily inhibited during this 

 period in middle-class European males who 

 had grown up in the last 50 years was gen- 

 eralized to the human race. 



Psychoanalysis developed a theory that 

 the psychodynamic mechanism that brings 

 about repressed sexuality during these years 

 of growth is interaction between parents and 

 children over the child's rivalry with the 

 parent of its own sex (the Oedipus conflict). 

 There are sufficient clinical data from west- 

 ern society to suggest that repression is one 

 way of resolving a situation which every 

 human society must face but comparative 

 studies show that it is not the only way 

 (Mead, 1942). Nor does the comparative 

 material lend any support to a theory that 

 proposes a diminished drive during this 

 period as explanatory. The evidence seems 

 to suggest, rather, that unless interfered 

 with by the society, children of both sexes 

 can maintain some sexual interest relatively 

 steadily until the great reinforcement which 

 accompanies the physiologic changes of jni- 

 berty. The variations in behavior during 

 this period, whether auto-erotic play is re- 

 ported to disappear (Arapesh, Mead, 1935), 

 or whether young males are treated as sex- 

 ual playthings by older women (Kaingang, 

 Henry, 1941), or whether children of the 

 same age engage in experimental sex play 

 together, including such adult activities as 

 copulation, depends on the culture pattern 

 (Trol)riand, Malinowski, 1929). 



