Puberty, in many ways, appears to be a young person's sexual awakening.
Many adults feel that before the storms and transformations of adolescence, kids are almost completely innocent of sex (unless we tell them about it). But the past 40 or 50 years of sex research have demonstrated that this is simply not so. Sexuality does not begin at puberty. For most of us, sexuality begins not long after birth. It may even begin be/ore birth. According to, M.D., the grand master of sex research, ultrasound scans have shown that boy babies in the womb sometimes have erections a few weeks before they're born. And girl babies may prodce vaginal lubrication when they're only a few weeks old.

In Dr.sample, fully 70 percent of males reported having engaged in some sort of sex play before adolescence-typically masturbation, exhibiting the genitals or touching the genitals of another child. This sort of thing seems to be less common among girls, but even so, 14 percent of adult women recalled that sometime before adolescence, they'd experienced orgasm, through either masturbation or sex play with others.

In other words, we're sexual beings, almost from Day One. It may be comforting for parents to retreat into a soft-focus vision of childhood sexual innocence, but that's not doing anybody a favor. Kids are sexual, whether they've reached puberty or not. And honestly acknowledging that sexuality is the first step toward being a genuine help to them, once they hit the heavy seas of adolescence. (For help in learning to talk to your kids about sex, see "Birds and Bees.")