The whole-body rapture found in Mom's arms lasts only through infancy, but children become expert at seeking the same security as they grow older, and good parents have a sixth sense about what the priorities are. A wailing child with a cut knee gets a long hug first, even though it's the bleeding wound that needs attention. In uncounted thousands of such tactile transactions, kids learn to use touch as a means of connection at least as expressive as--and certainly more satisfying than--anything so detached as speech. With the pump thus primed, they are ready for the next, exponentially bigger step: the moment, at age 12 or so, when the glands engage, the hormones flow and a childhood of simple physicality becomes a lifetime of sexuality.
From the moment the bodies of boys and girls are able to conceive, nature is very clear that it wants these mere babies to go about making babies of their own, and so it makes the impulse almost irresistible. There's a reason for the fabled sexual stamina of teens: the more frequent the pairings, the more likely the offspring. What's more, the pleasure of sex can often lead to long-term bonding, something else nature wants if babies and children--with their long years of dependency--are going to survive into adulthood.
But even at this unsophisticated stage of sexual maturation, there's more going on in kids than simply developing an exquisite reproductive itch and learning the wonderful ways it can be scratched. "More and more in our field, we don't even talk about sex anymore," says anthropologist Gil Herdt, director of the Program in Human Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University. "We talk about sexuality. It's something that involves the entire person, the whole life course, not just the sexual acts."
Marrow agrees and takes the notion even further with the belief that human sexuality is a form of communication as much as it is of procreation. Nearly all creative acts are at least in part communicative. Songs are written to be sung to somebody else; pictures are painted to be hung for somebody else. Is it any surprise that sex--an act infinitely more intimate than any type of art--is also a creative way of communicating complex ideas and deep feelings? "The biologists think the biology comes first," Marrow says. "I think consciousness is the first part of sex, and exploring that consciousness with another person is one of its purposes." If Marrow is right, it's no wonder that poetry and music are often included in the business of romance, if only to make that message richer.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993147-3,00.html#ixzz12mWmxedL
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