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Prevalence, impact, and meaning attribution of childhood sexual experiences of undergraduate males
Abstract
This is the first study of its kind to integrate empirical data from college men who reported a childhood sexual experience with a significantly older person with qualitative accounts of their perceptions and adaptations to these sexual interactions. The purpose was to delineate between those experiences that were clearly perceived as abusive, versus those incidents that were judged to be more positive. Descriptive accounts of these events, along with independent measures of current interpersonal functioning and adherence to hypermasculine beliefs and attitudes, provided several sources from which to ascertain internal consistency or discrepancies in reporting. This study shows that 18% of male college students are willing to report such a childhood sexual experience (CSE), with an equal ratio of young males engaging with an older male or female. Students who disclosed such a sexual event were more likely to come from conflictual family homes, to identify higher levels of sexual dysfunction, and lower levels of sexual self-esteem. They were also likely to engage in more masturbatory activity and in less direct sexual interactions with others. Boys who were adolescents at the time of the CSE were more likely to have their sexual development arrested, which incurred substantial impairments to their sexual self-identity. This study also confirms that boys who have had sexual experiences as children with older women are far more likely to perceive these experiences as positive and beneficial in their lives. The findings from this project assert that future empirical research and clinical interventions with this population needs to allow men more open-ended opportunities to describe and self-define a wide variety of childhood sexual experiences, free of biased language (e.g. abuse, victim, or molestation). With a self-created framework within which to evaluate childhood sexual interactions, men can begin to reflect upon how their own past sexual experiences influence their current interpersonal and sexual adjustment. These conversations will hopefully lead to more open dialogues about power; sexual, personal, interpersonal, and community power--its uses and abuses. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)
Subject Area
Educational psychology|Social psychology
Recommended Citation
Fishman, Jeffrey Dean, "Prevalence, impact, and meaning attribution of childhood sexual experiences of undergraduate males" (1990). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9110137.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9110137