Body conscious talk: Discussing masturbation
by guest blogger Katie Schaffer
Little kids masturbate. They’re exploring their bodies and it feels good. But one of the reasonable concerns that many parents have is how to encourage children’s curiosity and joyous sensual connection to their body while also establishing certain kinds of boundaries (like, how about we don’t masturbate in the grocery store…).
A common strategy is to try to teach young children the difference between “public” and “private.” I have my doubts about this approach for a number of reasons. One has to do with effectiveness. I find that “public” and “private” are too abstract and too contextually-specific for young children (with their deep adherence to the concrete) to really understand. In addition, I fear that “private” slides too easily into “secret” and sets up a dangerous paradigm in terms of keeping children safe from abuse. Politically, I am also skeptical about teaching children that the key to sexuality is to privatize it.
Instead, the strategy I’ve tried to use has to do with teaching young children that activities take place in specific locations. This is both concrete in a way they can grasp, and also sets up masturbation as just another activity we do in a particular place. Eating, sleeping, and peeing all have locations; masturbation does as well. What follows is an example of a conversation I have had with a four year old:
Child: playing with their penis at the kitchen table while I put out a snack.
Me: Hey I’ve got a question. Can you tell me some things we do at the kitchen table?
Child: We eat and we drink orange juice.
Me: We do! Can you tell me some things we do in the bathroom?
Child: We pee.
Me: What else? (sly grin)
Child: We poop! (giggle)
Me: You got it, kiddo. What about in your bedroom?
Child: I sleep and I play with puppy.
Me: Playing with our penises or vaginas is really fun, where do you think is the best place to do it?
Child: In the bathroom?
Me: Absolutely! Also in our bedrooms. So let’s focus on using our hands to eat right now and then after our snack, you can cruise on over to your bedroom and play with your penis there. Sound good?
I want to note a couple of things about this conversation. One is that I’ve talked to some self-identified “radical” or “progressive” White people (many of whom don’t have children) who are insistent that they would allow their children to masturbate wherever and are dismissive of other parents’ efforts to set some spatial boundaries. There seems to me to be some insidious White privilege and class entitlement to this sentiment. Given extreme and violent policing of Black and brown children, parents of Black and brown children are rightfully scared of the violence their children might face for even the most regular of children’s behavior or activities. (Take, for example, six-year old Salecia Johnson was handcuffed and arrested by police while in school).
We have to ask both:
- How do we support children in their curiosity, exploration, and loving relationship with their body? and
- Who has access to freely be a body in the world? How do we challenge systematic and institutional violence that threatens children’s ability to do so?
The other note I want to make is that for folks with different kinds of home space or access to home space, having a conversation that encourages masturbation in your own bedroom might not be feasible or desirable. While there might be more constrictions on a child’s ability to explore their body if everyone shares a bedroom or bed, or if the family is living in a homeless shelter, there’s still a possibility to have a conversation with them that acknowledges that masturbation feels good and helps them figure out when and how they can explore or self-soothe in this way.
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Katie Schaffer is a white cis queer woman dedicated to collectively envisioning and implementing liberatory educational practices. For the past three years, Katie has worked at the New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute (PDI) where she writes and facilitates workshops on gender and sexuality in early childhood. She offers workshops for both educators and family members of young children. If you’re interested in learning more about these workshops or how to bring them to your school or program, contact Katie at Katherine.Schaffer@cuny.edu or visit the series website here.
In addition to her work at PDI, Katie also engages in gender organizing through her role as a board member for the Third Wave Fund, an organization which resources and supports youth-led gender justice activism to advance the political power, well-being, and self determination of communities of color and low-income communities in the United States. If you want to learn more about Third Wave, click here.
Click here for more information on participating in a Raising Race Conscious Children interactive workshop/webinar or small group workshop series.