NCJ Number
144487
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 17 Issue: 4 Dated: (July-August 1993) Pages: 515-526
Date Published
1993
Length
12 pages
Annotation
A sample of 128 female undergraduates completed a questionnaire asking them to describe a sexual game or play experience from their childhood and to rate how normative they perceived it to have been.
Abstract
A typology of normal childhood sexual play was derived from the respondents' narratives, including playing doctor, exposure, experiments in stimulation, kissing games, fantasy sexual play, and other games and play involving some aspect of sexual activity. Eighty-five percent of the respondents remembered a childhood sexual game; they did not differ from those who did not remember any similar experiences. Of that 85 percent, 44 percent reported participating in cross-gender games. There was a trend for this subgroup to have seen the play as involving persuasion, manipulation, or coercion. There was also a strong relationship between abuse and cross-gender play, not present in sexual play conducted between two girls. 2 tables and 28 references