CONCLUSION OF THEORIES 2
March 11th, 2009There is one important difference in parental behaviour towards boys. Boys are taught, quite early in life, to avoid showing emotions and to refrain from touching and cuddling. To show emotions, to cry, or to want to cuddle and be cuddled is ‘sissy’ in our culture. How much these learned restraints damage men’s ability to relate to other people, to communicate properly with their sexual partner, and to enjoy mutual sexual pleasuring (which is essentially a touching enjoyment) is unclear, but the psychic damage could be considerable.
James Prescott, an American neuropsychologist, believes that male adult aggression and violence are due (at least in part) to a lack of cuddling and of bodily pleasure in the early years of a boy’s life. He recalls that studies in the University of Winsconsin Primate Laboratory showed that baby monkeys which were prevented from touching any other monkey in childhood (although they could see, hear, and smell the others) became violent when adults. He also recalls that psychiatrists have found that parents who physically hurt their children invariably had themselves been deprived of physical affection and touching during their childhood. Dr Prescott’s strongest support for his theory came from a study of other societies. He found that those societies which gave their children the most physical affection (by cuddling, by touching, and by letting the child show its emotions) during infancy and early childhood had less violence, theft, and assaults than societies which treated their children harshly and disapproved of physical affection.
He says, ‘we seem to have a firmly based principle: physically affectionate human societies are highly unlikely to be physically violent’, and he argues that we should encourage touching, holding, and body contact with and by our children, especially our boys. Dr Prescott’s opinions are supported by Dr Richard Leakey, who for many years has been studying primitive societies and the fossil remains of societies long since disappeared. He says that man is not innately aggressive, but co-operative. Aggression only began when man ceased to be nomadic and settled in areas to grow crops. In other words, human aggression is due to the way in which society evolved; it is not inborn.
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