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SPAIN (ESPAGÑA)
Index → Europe
→ Spain
Also: Gitano (Spanish Gypsies), Olivos
(Andalusian Pueblo)
Bachs-i-Comas (1984)[1]
reports of a pilot study of sexual knowledge, identification, feelings, and
attitudes of 5-7 year old children. Information was obtained on sexual identity,
sex differences, role of the couple in reproduction, affective relationships
within the family, pregnancy, birth, and lactation. Hernandez-Martinez (1984)[2]
studied the sexual behaviour of 7,492 14-18 year olds. Subjects were
administered a 116-item questionnaire and a face-to-face interview to assess
“masturbatory activity, heterosexual intercourse, intercourse within an
established relationship, homosexuality, and infantile sexuality”.
López
Sánchez (2001)[3] refers to a numeric study on
childhood sexual behaviours carried out by López et al. (1997) involving
parents, teachers and adolescents. Noting the problems in conducting the
research (“[…] estamos en una cultura que niega la existencia de la
sexualidad infantil por considerar peligrosas sus manifestaciones y hay
dificultades éticas para estudiarlas de manera experimental, a través de
observaciones o a través de preguntas directas a los menores”), it was
observed that:
“La frecuencia de
la masturbación es mucho mayor de lo que se suele creer, tanto en niños como
en niñas aunque las fuentes de investigación no son muy precisas. En una
investigación reciente (López, Guijo, Del Campo y Palomo, 1997) [?] en la que
usamos tres fuentes de información, padres, educadores y jóvenes, referidas a
los 11 primeros años de vida, encontramos que: a) El 28% de los jóvenes
recuerdan haberse masturbado con la mano y el 16% con un objeto. b) Los
padres han observado en el 13% de los hijos masturbación con la mano y en el
5% con un objeto. c) Los educadores han observado en el 20% de los alumnos
masturbación con la mano y en el 8% con un objeto. Otras investigaciones
apuntan en la misma dirección. Estas conductas tienen para los niños un claro
significado sexual hasta el punto que el 5% de ellos cree haber llegado a
tener orgasmos antes de la pubertad. […] Los padres y educadores afirman
haber observado juegos de contenido sexual en aproximadamente el 80% de los
menores[4] (López y
Otros, 1997)” (2001:p276, 278).
The original work [received from the author,
entitled “Sexualidad Prepuberal”][5], however, claimed that 9.4%
experienced orgasm, or 5.4% of females and 18.0% of males (p20, 32 of Engl.
transl.).
More interestingly, the authors make the
following observations:
“[Depite a heightened interest in abuse
matters] the existence of childhood sexuality remains largely unrecognised.
In fact, as has been discovered in many Englishspeaking countries
(particularly in the United States), apart from some positive results the
studies that have been carried out on the sexual abuse of minors have had
three perverse [sic] effects: the persecution of healthy manifestations of
sexual behaviour in childhood –by the children themselves and among each
other, who explore each other or play in a consensual fashion-, the increase
in the “fear of affectionate and social contact” between adults and minors
(even within the family!), and the increase in a deeply rooted idea in our
culture: the “danger” itself of sexuality”.
Barkley and Mosher (1995)[6]
reviewed the research on childhood sexuality in Hispanic culture.
The
difficulties that Tissot had in getting his work published in Spanish
indicate opposition from medical authorities in Spain during the Enlightenment to consideration of onanism as a disease
(Perdiguero Gil and González de Pablo, 1990)[7].
Nevertheless, Catholic priests warned children for masturbation by threat of
“Heart problems, spinal debilities, brain tumors, and bowel obstructions”
well into the 20th century (Mitchel, 1998:p107-8)[8].
Of course it was rampant even judging from schoolboys’ confessions.
Before
its revision in 1998, Spain
has the lowest age of consent in Europe (12). Nieto et al. (1997)[9] reported:
“Studies carried out with 12- to 13-year-old
elementary school students in Education
General Basica (EGB) indicated that 87.74 percent of the girls and 38.42
percent of the boys had never masturbated. The numbers lessened when groups
of 14- to 17-year-old high school students were studied from Baccalaureate Unified
Polyvalent (BUP). In this study, 70.51 percent of the girls and 12.16 percent
of the boys stated that they had never masturbated. […] Almost three quarters of the boys, 71.4
percent, began masturbating between the ages of 10 and 12 years, while only
10 percent of the girls stated they have masturbated at that age. […] The
most-consistent masturbation frequency in children is once a month […]”.
“A national study on masturbation in children and
young people found that 76.7 percent stated that they began masturbating
between the ages of 10 to 15 years. Knowledge about masturbation came from
conversations and readings (74.8 percent for males and 57.2 percent for
women)”.
Also,
“Heterosexual conduct in Spanish children and
adolescents has greatly increased in recent years. Current data indicate that
more than 54 percent of the women and 52.7 percent of the men have already
had their first date at 13 years”.
Thurén
(1988:p202-3)[10] stated that many
informants for a Barrio in Valencia emphasised “ignorance, fear, bitterness” against parents for lack of
support when questioned about growing up feminine. Nevertheless, many
commented upon “the excitement they felt as children when they began to
realize there was a great mystery around sexual differentiation. Most women
told with great tenderness of the exciting whispers with girl-friends in
pre-adolescence, the slow putting together of pieces of information, the
acceptance and growing expectation of what “life” was like, the first daring
lies to the parents in order to go out with a boy…”. Although bookstores sold
sex education materials since the middle 1970s, hardly anyone mentioned
learning sex from books.
Marañón
struggled with the issue of Freudian infantile sexuality, a notion that seems
to offend “the patriotism of the human species. We want to believe that a
child’s soul is pure”. He further believed that Freud’s theory was, in part,
culture-bound and that the precocious sexual activities ascribed to children
did not occur in Spain:
“It is certain that our children are not like that”, he asserted (acc. Glick,
1982:p553)[11]. In a 1929 lecture,
Juarros argued that, probably not exceptional for Europe at that time,
“infantile sexuality [was] sadly ignored by most or all parents, who do not
perceive sexual appetites in children”[12].
In a 1996-1997 study[13]
based on 304 universities in, freshman students (63.49% female, average age
19.46 +/- 1.55 years) indicated in 51.77% to have begun to masturbate between
the 11 and 14 years. In 56.15% of whom had sexual experience it was begun
between 17 and 19 years of age. In another study[14]
(2831 pupils aged 14-20 years from urban, suburban, and rural populations in
the north of Madrid) the average age of the first intercourse
was 15.4 years +/- 1.68 SD for males and 16.1 years +/- 1.46 SD for females.
In yet another study[15] (3139 students aged 14 to 19
years living in the city of Barcelona), it appeared that boys had their
first experience at a significantly earlier age, but girls participated in
sexual intercourse more often.
To reflect on these figures, studies support
the hypothesis that “religiosity and church attendance seem to still put a
strong damper, in Spain, on young people’s sexual
behaviors”[16].
Thuren (1994)[17]:
“While celebration of the first menstruation may seem
especially logical in societies that emphasize motherhood, as does Spain, a
girl’s first menstruation there is, paradoxically, a shameful matter. The
explanation of this paradox lies in the supposition that what arrives with
the first menstruation is not potential motherhood, but potential sexual
activity, and also womanhood (as opposed to manhood), both of which are
construed as negative or ambivalent. This, however, suggests a new paradox in
the present Spanish context. After two decades of mostly positive change, the
concept of change has become synonymous with improvement; and sexuality,
always culturally emphasized in the Mediterranean area, has taken on the role
of a key symbol of change”.
A
recent study[18] examined
representations about sexuality among adolescents by analysing the content of
1,204 questions about sexuality and reproduction written by male and female
middle school and high school students (aged 13-14 years) enrolled in sex
education classes during a 6-year period (1992-1998) in Spain. The questions were evaluated according to dimensions of theme,
information versus opinion, concept clarification, health, pleasure or
displeasure, masculine or feminine reference, or quantity. The results
indicated that “girls speak about sexuality as a part of the future, have low
interest in erotic aspects of sex, and high interest in body, reproductive
health, and birth control. The boys speak more about sex than girls, are more
interested in erotic aspects of masturbation and intercourse, and are interested
in opinions rather than information”.
Also: Gitano
(Spanish Gypsies), Olivos (Andalusian Pueblo)
Janssen,
D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin: Magnus
Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology
Last
revised: Dec 2004
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