Hold On to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld

Author:Gordon Neufeld [Neufeld, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48596-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

SEX AS AN EXPRESSION OF ATTACHMENT HUNGER

In the natural order of things, sex happens between mature beings, not between children and those responsible for them. When children seek emotional closeness with adults, sexual interaction is highly unlikely. But should these same children become peer-oriented, the very same hunger for contact is subject to becoming sexualized. Sex becomes an instrument of peer attachment. Children who have replaced their parents with peers are the most likely to be sexually preoccupied or active. Those lacking a sense of intimacy with their parents are the ones most needing to seek intimacy with their peers, but now through sex rather than through feelings or words. This was certainly true of Nicholas, Heather, and Jessica, cut off from loving parents by their peer orientation. They were using sex with their peers to try to satisfy their hunger for connection and for affection.

Sex is a ready-made instrument for those driven to satisfy primitive attachment needs. In Chapter 2, I listed the six ways of attaching, the first of which was through the physical senses. If a child is looking for closeness primarily by means of physical contact, sex is very effective. If attachment is sought in sameness, the child’s behavior will conform to values of the peer group, as in the cases of Jessica and the two young girls who provided oral sex to the baseball player. For a person seeking the third way of attaching—exclusive belonging and loyalty—sexual interaction will be very enticing. If a child is drawn to the fourth way—being significant to someone—then affirmation of status or attractiveness will become the prime objective and sex a useful tool for keeping score. Of course, sexual contact can also represent warm feelings and genuine intimacy, but for immature, peer-oriented teenagers it rarely does—as much as they would like to think so. They lack the vulnerability and the maturity for their sexuality to reach these two highest forms of attaching, as I will shortly explain.

Current fashion styles in dress, makeup, and demeanor promote the sexualization of young girls who are in no way ready for mature sexual activity. Looks, with their charged sexual component, have become a primary measure of self-worth, according to Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a historian at Cornell University and author of The Body Project, a history of American girlhood. Brumberg told Newsweek magazine that fifty years ago, when girls talked about self-improvement, they had in mind academic achievement or some contribution to society. Now, she says, appearance is foremost. “In adolescent girls’ private diaries and journals, the body is the consistent preoccupation, second only to peer-relationships.”3 Of course, even the phrase “second only to” misses the mark, since the obsession with body image is a direct result of peer orientation and its by-product, the sexualization of adolescence.

Without knowing it, teenagers are playing with fire when they sexualize their attachments. Sex is not a simple instrument to be used for one’s own purposes. It is not possible for adolescents to walk away from sex unscathed and casually, without something essentially human being disturbed.

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