Medicine: Babes in Kinseyland

When Sigmund Freud shocked the world by declaring that sexuality begins in the cradle and is a vital force in a child’s life before ever he reaches puberty, critics soon found a flaw. Freud, they pointed out, had not reached this conclusion so much by observing children as by working backward from the stories told him by sick adults.

Last week Sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey told a Manhattan audience that his investigators have by now studied “several hundred” children under five, and have amassed the scientific evidence that Freud lacked. Their findings, he said, “fully confirm Freud’s views” on the sexual basis of children’s behavior.

Kinsey in his “female volume” (TIME, Aug. 24) had already reported his belief that the infant’s response to loving attention and physical contact is sexual in character. But this time he went further. By the age of two or three, he said, attitudes that will affect patterns of adult sexual behavior are already formed in a child’s personality.

The tot who joyously accepts parental cuddling, and “cuddles back” spontaneously, is likely to carry this attitude into adulthood and enter into marriage without unhealthy restraint, Dr. Kinsey contended. The diffident, withdrawn child is more likely to become a tense and possibly frigid marriage partner.

Dr. Kinsey protested that he cannot tell parents what sex education to give their children, or even when they should begin it. But, he added, “if the child is more than three or four months old, the parents have already lost valuable time and opportunities.”