CHILDHOOD SEXUALITY: SUCKING
Though the sucking experience may give the infant pleasure, especially orally, and though penile erections are observed in conditions related to the sucking experience, we must be cautious in attributing penile erections to stimulation resulting from the sucking experience. In some cases it may be so, but in others it is not. It has been reported that vigorous sucking by active infants is accompanied by penile erection which may last throughout the sucking period and continue for several minutes after the breast is removed. On the other hand, Halverson from his experiments on infant sucking, reports that although infants like to suck at the breast, preferring it to the bottle, penile erection never occurred during sucking at the breast. It is possible that the experiment itself served to deter from the full pleasurable response, since during this period the breast-fed infants lay on the mother’s lap while the mother leaned forward so that her breast was above the baby’s mouth. To remove the nipple from the infant’s mouth the mother merely assumed an upright position. In other words, the stimulation was severely restricted, being limited to the presence of the nipple in the infant’s mouth. No caressing, no fondling by the mother, no eye-to-eye contact, no opportunity for the infant to touch the mother’s face, to place its fingers in her mouth apparently existed. The question left unanswered is how many of these infant boys would have responded with penile erections under normal nursing conditions. Some older infants in the Halverson experiment thumped the nipple vigorously with the tongue and rolled it about in the mouth in what Halverson regarded as purely playful activity, but these things occurred only with bottle feeding; none of the breast-fed babies exhibited this reaction. Halverson concluded that so-called pleasure-sucking activities have little or no connection with penile erection. Penile erection did occur during the observation period but never while sucking at the breast. Instead, erection occurred when infants encountered a difficult or irritating situation. Halverson interprets the erections as related to abdominal pressure, for when thwarting was introduced (such as removing the nipple or giving the infant a difficult nipple) the resulting movements were conspicuously characterized by severe contractions of the abdominal walls. Although other motor patterns varied during the onset of penile erection, marked abdominal pressure was always present. The fact that marked abdominal pressure is probably the most effective stimulus for penile erection, as observed in the Halverson experiment, does not rule out other possible stimulants, such as the stimulation received in a normal satisfying nursing experience.
The mother’s physiological responses to sucking and coitus are very similar. Uterine contractions occur during sucking as they do during sexual stimulation. Nipple erection occurs during both (Masters and Johnson). Milk ejection has been observed to occur in both, and the degree of milk ejection appears to be related to the degree of erotic response. The nipple-erection reflex may lead to more efficient nursing, increasing the satisfaction for the sucking infant as well as for the mother. Marked breast stimulation occurring during sucking or through fondling and caressing induces orgasms in some women.
Mothers who choose to suckle their babies have a higher general level of sexual interest than do non-suckling, postpartum women. This is borne out in two studies in which mothers who suckled their babies were compared with those who did not. Mothers with positive attitudes toward suckling gave more milk and were more successful in breast feeding than those with negative feelings. Uteri of suckling mothers returned to normal size sooner. Many mothers (25% in one study) felt erotic arousal during suckling—to the point of orgasm for a few of them. Suckling mothers not only reported erotic stimulation from the suckling experience, they were interested in as rapid a return to coitus as possible. Suckling mothers engaged in coitus sooner after birth than did non-suckling mothers. They were more interested in sex and placed more importance on the exchange of affection with others than did mothers who chose to bottle-feed their babies. Suckling mothers were also more tolerant toward erotic behavior of their offspring, such as masturbation and sex play with others.
Some of the mothers experienced fear of a perverted sexual interest from the amount of eroticism stimulated by the nursing process, and several non-nursing mothers who had nursed previous babies refused to nurse again because of concern and guilt over their erotic feelings. If the husband felt that nursing was disgusting or harmful, it discouraged many women from nursing, and they had little erotic interest for months. Ironically, these men were denied sex relations longer than if their wives had suckled their babies. The closeness and the pleasurable feelings from the relationship in the long run may benefit infant, mother, and husband, too.
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