What is the psychological effect on a child if he/she is sexually active? (boyfriend, mom)

[winterbird]

No way 13-17 is young adulthood.

[rwocmo]

To be fair, perhaps the OP is talking about sexual activity between minors, and not adult/minor.

[Frozenfire88]

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

I've heard people (mostly men) tell me that they "discovered"...self love, if you will...around puberty. I am always like, "Seriously? I've been doing that since before I can remember, and I've got pretty good if fragmented memory going back to age 4-5 or so at least." You don't have to be physically mature for certain things to feel good.

I think that the biggest problem is consent and agency. A child is easily manipulated, and most often the person who is pursuing them is an adult in a position of authority and power. They don't have the easy ability to say no and make them back off. I don't think (as far as I am aware or can remember) that I was ever molested as a kid, but I remember a babysitter who was a cruel old woman, ran her daycare like some kind of a prison camp, and I never told my parents about it. Not because I was told not to tell, but simply because this woman was an adult in a position of authority over me, and so I assumed that whatever she was doing was simply correct and I had to deal with it. If she hit me, it wasn't because she was wrong or abusive, it was because I was not good.

It is this vulnerability that makes it wrong...a child does not necessarily KNOW if they are being mistreated, or have the understanding that they could say no, and maybe not do this if they don't want. Their ability to give informed consent is impaired.

The difference between sex and rape is consent, same as the difference between BDSM and abuse, between a gift and theft, between visiting and intruding, etc. Consent defines the protocol of so many human interactions. So engaging sexually with a child is violating their consent, if only because they lack the agency to understand their ability to say no, in many cases.

The other problem is that for everyone, we have programming that develops in our minds during the formative years of childhood that shapes our behavior, choices, and relationships throughout life. Because my caregivers as a child were mostly people at least 2 generations older, I learned to trust much older people, and I now understand that is likely part of why I feel safe and loved with older partners. Most of the people I've known who had someone doing sexual things to them as children, go on to be involved in abusive, coercive, or unhealthy relationships as adults. The code was written at a young age, that love isn't respectful, safe, or unconditional necessarily, or that they have no right to ownership of their bodies or sexuality.

I'm trying to set aside the automatic knee-jerk revulsion to the very concept and discuss this rationally. I've heard some argue that this can be done with the most loving and sweet of intentions and therefore is somehow justifiable or ok. Unfortunately, it does cause psychological damage even if there is no physical harm done. There are reasons that children are protected from this sort of thing in almost every society I've ever heard of. Reasons that are not arbitrary.

I've read that in the past girls married young or were pregnant young. I wonder if people around them thought it was ok

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by yologuy01

I've read that in the past girls married young or were pregnant young. I wonder if people around them thought it was ok

Bear in mind... My post was talking about CHILDREN, which to me is pre-pubescent. I differentiate that from TEENS who are to me, not children, nor yet adults. I have a whole other set of ideological positions regarding teen sex. So your comment would (I assume) be about post-pubescent teens, and that is different from what I was talking about in my post that you quoted.

I believe that teen marriage or pregnancy is problematic. Teens aren't ready to consent to lifelong things. Well protected teenage sex, however, I don't object to so much....and in particular I don't get why a teenager having sex with another teenager is more ok, than a teen having sex with an older partner, so long as it is kept to a level of casualness, and is not coercive. Maybe that is the problem...keeping it casual enough. I do recall that the older partners I had as a teenager were harder to get rid of once I tired of them, than the high school boys were.

[ClaraC]

Originally Posted by winterbird

No way 13-17 is young adulthood.

I sort of tend to agree with you, but I found out today that Amazon.com and the public library system has a category of YA (young adult) literature that's exactly that time frame - aimed at 13-17 year old readers.

So at least in the world of literature appropriateness/ability to read, 13-17 is considered a Young Adult.

[Upstate67]

Originally Posted by OverItAll

OP, are you asking because you are a "child lover"?

I was wondering that myself.. Either that or he's a parent whose child has already started having sex.

Either way that's a question that sane, rational people don't ask unless they have a vested interest.

[oh-eve]

Originally Posted by yologuy01

I was wondering what are the negative psychological effects on a child who starts having sex at an early age. What happens to them mentally. I've heard it was much more common in the past, where people started having sex early. I dont know if it was become humans had shorter lives or they didn't think there was something wrong with it or for other reasons. I was wondering if something negative happens to them, for example are they traumatized or is there nothing bad about a boy or girl having sex?. Is it ok for someone at 7 or 10 years old or somewhere around that age to have a sex life, do they experience pleasure?. I'm curious about the negative psychological effects on a child having sex if any.

No. No. No. 7? Are you kidding me?


Why are you asking? And are they having sex with someone their own age?

[Sonic_Spork]

I actually think that it is a valid subject to discuss, because I have heard people who experienced pedophilic attractions and interests talk about how if they do something in a loving way, to make a kid feel good, they don't understand how it's actually harmful. It is a concept that apparently some folks struggle with.

So most people will react with basic moral revulsion. The "of course it's wrong! Because...everyone knows it's wrong!" argument doesn't do a lot to persuade anyone who is actually asking these questions. As a non-religious person, I question things that are just a given as a basic moral position, all the time. I want to know if something is wrong because there is actually a victim, actual harm, or what? What is the real logic behind the rule, does the rule stand up to scrutiny. I think that human beings have some obligation to ask these sorts of questions. I'm no fan of blind obedience.

But as someone who remembers her childhood... I remember the things I did. I remember the things other kids did. And I have now participating in the raising of two brothers and two sons from infancy. And people act like little children are innocent angels and THEY'RE NOT. They are as human as any human and sometimes they do monstrous things...but we're not talking about that. We're talking about sex. Which in a perfect scenario should be freeing, fulfilling, and a glorious part of a person's expression of life. Joyful, even. To say that a child has zero sexual expression or identity is false. No one taught me that things felt good as a little girl, I figured that out on my own, and enjoyed myself quite often. However, when you bring another human being into the picture it begins to get complicated. Now you are writing code on how a person interacts with other persons and how our sexuality comes into that. Small children are not ready to process this stuff. They just don't have the tools yet for it. And I really don't think it's ok even if the other person is another child of the same age, and that kind of exploration should be prevented--but hopefully without a load of shame, disgust, or negative reaction attached--by whatever adults are in authority over the children in question.

[Dopo]

The bad thing is that this topic is "Super taboo" in a America
And I think it makes things worse for everybody, because everybody is afraid to ask anything about it and be labeled a monster just for asking a question

I have a little more freedom to talk about it because it happened to me so long ago that I vaguely remember it.
So I can talk about it and share how it affected me

As crazy as it sounds, this can be an interesting topic and here's why:
- does masturbation count as becoming sexuality active? Because I bet a big percentage of people start doing it at a very early age
- don't know if this is true, but I was told that in a Asian country, is common for the mother calm their toddler boys by grabbing them
- did you know that in the US there are 3 different age if consent? Chicago, being in 3 states, also has 3 different age of consent
- did you know that Mexico has one of the lowest age of consent in the World?

[Dopo]

I forgot to mention, something else that is interesting is the difference on the way people see a girl that starts "early" compared to a boy that starts "early"

When it is a boy, people see it as if he won a championship