Chapter 12: Life-Span Sexual Development - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Chapter 12: Life-Span Sexual Development

For use with Human Sexuality Today (4th Ed.)

Bruce King

Slides prepared by: Traci Craig

• Infancy
• Early Childhood
• School-age years
• Puberty
• Adolescence
• Emerging Adulthood
• Young Adulthood
• Middle Age
• Elderly Years

• Male fetuses can have erections
• Baby girls can have vaginal lubrication within 24 hours of birth
• Bonding: hold and cuddle infants
• Infants show reflexive arousal when nursing
• Random behavior may lead to discovery of pleasurable sensation, which is then repeated.

• Egocentric children explore primarily their own bodies prior to age 2
• After age 2, interest in the genitals is common.
• Undressing and sexual exploration games from 3-5. (viewing and touching genitals)
• Usually games with same-sex children
• More aggressive sexual behavior may indicate abuse.

• Curiositywatch others bathe, urinate
• Parental response is important—overreacting may cause future negative feelings about their bodies.
• Focus on private vs. public behavior
• Parent reactions are often reflections of how the parents feel about their own sexuality.

• Demanding privacy in the bathroom
• Modesty and inhibition about exposing their bodies
• Sexual play does continue, just more hidden from parents
• Girls more likely than boys to receive negative reactions about sexual exploration.

• Show sexual attraction and capable of reproduction
• Two part process
• Adrenal glands mature—increase in androgens
• Maturing gonads—ovaries and testes mature
• Secondary sex characteristics

• Growth spurt—girls taller than boys
• Breast developmentnot hidden
• Increase in fatty deposits in the hips and buttocks
• Pubic hair appear and a couple years later axillary hair
• Body odor and acne accompany increase in male hormones.

• Vagina and uterus enlarge
• Menarche—between 12 & 13 (this age is dropping)
• “becoming a woman” vs. “curse” will influence self-esteem
• No prior informationvery frightening
• Topic of crude jokes and many negative messages.

• About 2 years behind girls.
• Testes, scrotum, penis, prostate, and seminal vesicles grow
• Capable of ejaculation about a year after growth began
• Nocturnal emissionboys usually not given much information, not under voluntary control

• Gynecomastia: temporarily enlarged breasts—goes away by mid-teens
• Pubic hair grows and two years later, facial and underarm hair
• Amount of body hair is hereditary
• Acne and body odor
• Deepening voice—voice box grows

• Usually puberty starts at 11 or 12
• Before age 9 precocious puberty
• Environmental estrogens may cause early appearance of secondary sex characteristics
• Delayed puberty is often treated with hormones.

• Sexual attraction usually around age 10
• Both boys and girls have enaged in masturbation to orgasm usually prior to 12
• Age 13sexual exploration games
• Spin the bottle
• Post office

• Self-identity
• Body image and physical characteristics
• Maturbation
• Frequency: males 1.8 times per week; females .5 times per week (at age 15)
• Outlet for sexual tension, sexual experimentation, sexual self-confidence, and control of sexual impulses
• Important for girls  more fulfilling adult experiences.

• Masturbation: powerful predictor of adult sexuality
• Petting: erotic stimulation without intercourse (below the waist)—80% of teens
• Half of high school students are virgins, but a 1/3 of them have engaged in genital stimulation with a partner.

• Sexual Intercourse: 58% of people believe premarital sex is wrong
• What is sex? Anal? Oral?
• Teen pregnancy and birth rates declined in the 1990s
• Different reasons for having sex
• Girls: love and commitment make sex ok
• Boys: never miss an opportunity

• First intercourse:
• 25% of girls say they did not want to have sex.
• 33% of girls report physical pain/ 28% no pain
• Positive experiences: history of sex play, positive attitudes about sex play, and safe environment with a caring partner
• Negative experience: gave in to partner, no planning, and little experience with sex play.

• Peer pressure: half of boys are motivated by curiosity to have sex
• Desire for acceptance and to boost self-esteem might be one reason teens have sex.
• Teens overestimate the number of teens having sex
• Adolescent males see sex as competitive: an arena where one can ‘achieve and score’

• Teen girls may mistake sexual intimacy for emotional intimacy
• Double standardsnegative experiences for teen girls
• New peer pressure to abstain may be cause for the reduction in number of teens having sex.

• Age of marriage has increased to 25 for women and 27 for men.
• Longer period of single adulthood
• Ambiguous about self identifying as adults
• Dating, relationships, and love take on new importance
• Common in more advanced cultures.

• 80% of men and women in this age of had premarital sex
• 20% of unmarried women have had 4 or more partners in the past 4 years.
• Sexual experimentation
• 86% of women and 71% of men said it was difficult to have sex without emotional involvement.

• Serial monogamy—a series of relationships in which sex is reserved for just one other person
• Less influence of peer pressure and more understanding of personal sexual motivation
• Sexual self-schemas
• Erotophilia/Erotophobia

• Long-lasting monogamy
• Sex with only one partner in the last year
• Marriage: Sexual frequency in the first year15 times per month
• Married women more likely to experience orgasm
• Frequency drops with other time demands, parenthood, novelty wears off.

• Marriage: variety of sexual techniques
• People with partners more likely to masturbate than people without partners.
• Cohabitation: 700% increase in cohabiting since 1970
• Living together as a test or trial before marriage
• 54% of marriages begin as cohabitation

• Commitment levels vary for cohabitation
• Easier to walk away from the relationship (than in marriage)
• ½ of these arrangements end within years.
• Higher divorce rate for cohabitorsreduce expectations about marriage, greater tolerance of divorce

• Extramarital sex (in monogamous marriage)
• 37% of men and 20% of women have had a sexual affair
• Same rate for married as for cohabiting couples
• 90% believe extramarital sex is wrong.
• The majority of men over 45 think it is ok
• Men more concerned about sexual fidelity, women more concerned about emotional fidelity

• Open marriage: partners agree sex with others is ok.
• 15% of couples may have some sort of ‘understanding’
• Divorce rate is similar to sexually monogamous couples.
• Sexual jealousy is usually not the reason for break up of the relationship.

• Swinging—extramarital relations as a couple
• Ads, magazines, clubs, private parties—usually male homosexuality is not part of the arrangement
• Swingers seem to be demographically similar to non-swingers
• Short-lived experience—feelings of jealousy, sexual inadequacy or rejection.

• Sex for procreationpast reproductive age so thought to be asexual
• Difficulty accepting the idea of parents or grandparents being sexually active.
• Current attitudes about sex predict future attitudes about sex.
• 5-6 times per month

• Modern Maturity—over half of 45-54 year olds have sex at least once a week
• Sex is more important to 30-50 year olds than to 20 year olds.
• Emotional intimacy is related to relationship quality
• Sexual equilibrium in the couple

• Losing a mate: No clear expectations about dating for divorced or widowed adults
• 75% of only one or no partners a year after a divorce
• Men have more opportunities, (singles: F:M, 2:1)
• Age differences more accepted for men than women.

• Menstrual irregularity in women after age 35.
• Menopause—cessation of menstruation
• late 40s early 50s
• Hot flashes, flushing, sweating, nausea, feelings of suffocation
• Vagina walls are thinner and less elastic, decreased lubrication

• Menopause treated with Hormone Replacement Therapy
• Helps with physical symptoms
• Prevents osteoporosis, colon cancer, aging skin
• Increase risk of breast and endometrial cancer
• Quality of life is reported as better
• Natural herbal supplements

• Few show a decline in interest, some even increase
• Sexual activity when younger predicts sexual activity when older
• Regular sexual activity decreases vaginal atrophy.
• Masturbation rates do not change
• Empty nest syndrome may cause depression and cause a drop in sexual interest

• No sudden change in hormones: gradual decline
• Decreased sensitivity of the penis, longer to become erect and less firm erection, shrinkage of testicles, less forceful ejaculation, and a longer refractory period.
• Sperm production declines after 40.
• No change in masturbation rates.

• Society regards them as asexual
• People who have partners:
• At 60, 70% have sex regularly, 50% at least once a week.
• At 70, 33% at least once a week
• At 80, 25% at least once a month
• Decline with age, but still some activity.

• Sexual activity often limited by living arrangements and availability of partners.
• Women report partners are more romantic
• Partner gap: women outlive men, women have fewer partner choices
• 43-47% of the elderly report a medical problem that prevents sex.

• Opportunities for privacy may decline with age—nursing homes, dependent living.
• Sexual expression is more than intercourse.
• The largest barrier for sexual expression in this age group may be the stereotypes about elderly sexuality.