Chapter 6
MOTHER INSTINCT AND SEX
Even if all girls are not necessarily intended to become mothers, many of them have a strong mother instinct. Oftentimes this instinct to mother, look after, and supervise a male, has a direct relationship to the young girl's sexual attitudes and practices. It can, and does, cause heartbreak and maladjustment. And it appears to be a growing trend among many of America's teenagers. Frequently, it is based on things other than genuine concern for the male.
"Girls who wish to psychically castrate a male, often have the so-called mother instinct," says Dr. Samuel Greenberg, a New York psychoanalyst. "It is their way to compensate for the true, subconscious motivation to destroy or cause destruction to the male."
And Herbert Steingold, a clinical psychologist, proclaims that, "Mothering a male is in effect weakening him; therefore, the girl who has this attitude toward males really wishes to destroy him or lessen his place as the masterful and ruling."
Some girls display mother instincts toward boys because of their own inadequacies as females. It is not unusual to find a girl who doubts her femininity to seek out a boy who is less a male than his peers. Perhaps he is a cripple, in some way deformed, or has a severe handicap of a mental nature. Perhaps his personality is unacceptable to all but the mother-instinct-persuaded girl. He may be a neurotic or psychotic. Criminals attract such a type girl. So do the often-referred-to "mama's boys."
But why would a modern, teenaged girl want to mother a boy, even psychically?
"Because she has known so little of mothering herself," claims a juvenile case worker from Chicago. "This decade has found parents and children growing further apart. Or, if there is a togetherness, it is too often of the status-driven type, or the community sponsored. So we have girls growing up who have known little nurturing of their own development. We have mothers who are embarrassed to show love and devotion to their child. We have fathers who are like strangers to their children because of the demands at the office. And thus we have some girls coming to maturity who seek to give to a boy that which they have not known themselves mothering, affection, guidance."
The case histories which follow are of mother-instinct-oriented girls. The cases are of the "sick" variety in that the mother instinct of the girls has provided for sexual experiences out of context with their age and backgrounds. The cases are true unfortunately true, we might say, for they display attitudes that are unquestionably those that work to the disadvantage of teenagers and their young society that work to the disadvantage to us all.
CASE HISTORY
Millie Hardy's troubles started with her father, her psychiatrist has stated. The girl's mother was dominating and castrating of the husband. She sought, and succeeded, to demean him at every opportunity. The father did not protest. He accepted humiliation and degradation at the hands of his wife without a whimper. He was a physically strong man, but had himself been dominated by a mother. His marriage to Millie's mother was little more than the continuation of a mother-dependent relationship.
During Millie's early years, her father was a favorite playmate. Kind and gentle, he was a willing partner to any activity Millie desired. As she grew older, however, this relationship became something else: She began to use his love for her as power.
"Millie learned as an early child the principle of male castration," said her therapist. "It is unfortunate that her only example of female-male relationships was that of her mother, who would not let the father be a man."
During the years of fourteen to seventeen, Millie's relationship with boys was unusual. She had many boy friends. She treated them all badly, but because she was pretty and sexual looking she remained in demand by the boys. She seemed not particularly interested in any of them not, that is, until she met Jack, a spastic.
Millie found Jack in her history class. He was new to the school, having transferred from out of town. Jack was not particularly bright, and it appears that this, too, attracted Millie to the badly-deformed boy. She would walk to different classes with him, not minding the slowness of his pace or the crooked, lurching way his body moved above the twisted limbs. Her friends thought she was crazy to be attentive to a cripple. But they did not reckon with Millie's own deformity her warped emotions.
Millie was more considerate of Jack than she was of any of the many boys she had dated. Somehow, with him she felt disinclined to pick and bicker and seek to embarrass. Finally, she accepted a date with the crippled boy.
Jack drove his own car, one especially equipped to accommodate his handicap. He called for Millie exactly at eight o'clock.
Millie's mother and father were both a little awed at the boy's appearance. (He was grotesque looking because of a shrunken body and constantly rolling, uncontrollable eyes.) Millie's father was over-solicitous of the boy. Her mother was too silent, much too against his courtship of her daughter to risk any prolonged conversation.
As the young people departed the house, the Hardys watched from the front door. They saw their daughter holding tightly to Jack's arm, not for support, but to support him.
Most of their first date was spent talking. Millie was given to many reassurances to Jack, telling him that he was attractive, that he shouldn't feel that his disability prevented him from a normal life, that his personality made up for those things he lacked. Nice things for a girl to tell a crippled boy? Yes, but the motivations behind it were dirty.
"Millie was glad Jack was a cripple," said her psychiatrist. "It saved her from having to 'crippie' him castrate him, which was her all-consuming passion for any male."
"Why?" one might ask.
"Millie's father was a weak character," said the therapist. "Millie and her mother controlled him, moved him, made him do their will. This was Millie's male experience. She had to find a man she could control castrate or one, like Jack, who was already disabled."
Before many dates passed, Millie and Jack were petting in heated fashion. The activities were awkward because of Jack's disability. But Millie was an attentive young lover she held the boy, kissed him, moved his broken body close to the health of hers, all the time practically purring with the instincts of a mother. And soon, Millie was masturbating the boy, doing this without the mutuality of benefit for herself. (Psychically, this must have been a madly fulfilling moment for this castration-driven girl.)
Millie allowed Jack to commit her to an act of sexual intercourse. This, too, was awkwardly achieved. And the aggressor was Millie. Jack was placed on the floor and she adjusted them; she pounded her body to his.
Millie and Jack began thinking of marriage. It was then that Jack's father was transferred, and the boy moved out of town. For a long while Millie was distraught. But then she met a boy who was also already partially castrated, a boy with a handicap, one whom she could dominate. He was a Negro.
Mr. and Mrs. Hardy were shocked when their daughter brought Louis home for dinner one evening. Later, they expressed their "concern" that she should be attracted to a boy who was colored.
She claimed that she was a liberal even more, threw back in her father's face his own liberal views upon which he had raised her. The Hardys, feeling that too much objection would cause Millie to become more deeply involved with the Negro boy, withdrew their objections and decided to wait out this period of their daughter's experimentation.
Millie and Louis became sexually involved upon their third date. Her mother instincts were blooming and she was prepared to shelter the Negro boy from the cruel white world. But then she learned that she did not dominate him, that he did not need her solicitude. During a hot petting session, Millie sought to tease, withhold that which the boy wanted. He took it forcefully, committing Millie to a near-rape. She never saw Louis again.
After this Millie floated from one off-beat character to another. She knew as lovers another Negro, another spastic, a married man, a one-armed boy, and, finally, a homosexual who was unable to perform sexually with a female.
Millie's pattern did not change until she married the homosexual, contenting herself with the rationalization that he might eventually prove himself "a man." This was unlikely. It was also something that Millie would have rebelled against had it occurred.
After three years of marriage, Millie became impregnated by another man, told her husband, suffered his tears, then attempted suicide. She was unsuccessful, hospitalized, and psychiatrically treated.
"The mother instinct was strong in Millie," said her doctor. "But it was not genuine. It was a mere cover a disguise for her hostility and wish to castrate all males, and this was learned from attitudes that had once been directed toward her father."
CASE HISTORY
Debbie's father was a policeman. Her mother was hard working. As a child, Debbie played with dolls and played being a wife and mother, all of which delighted her mother very much. "It's nice today to think little girls still want to be like their mothers," she would say.
In high school, Debbie was considered somewhat wild. She was great pals with her brother, who was only a year her senior. Through him she met many boys, some good and some bad. Debbie seemed fondest of the so-called "bad boys." Something about them attracted her to them. According to a statement Debbie made to her therapist, she used to dream of herself as a reformer who would rehabilitate a bad boy, then marry him and live a life of happiness with a houseful of children.
Debbie met Barry through her brother, Bill. He was a perfect subject for rehabilitation. At seventeen he had already served time at a boy's reformatory on two separate occasions. Car theft was the crime. Barry was belligerent and wild, ready and willing to do anything that impulse suggested. And impulse suggested a great deal-breaking and entering, purse snatching, car thefts, gang fights almost anything to break the monotony of a high school drop-out's life.
Debbie was fifteen when she met Barry. She was overwhelmed by his dark good looks and tall, strong body, but it was his wildness that attracted her the most. She felt that she must look after the boy, keep him from crime and harm, make him socially acceptable, and one day make him her husband. She feel deeply in love and did not hide it from anyone, not even her police officer father.
"You're not to see that kid again," her father told her one day. "Jeeeez, what would people think if they knew my daughter went with one of the town's worst hoods?"
"I don't care, Dad," Debbie said honestly. "I intend to see Barry whether you want me to or not."
"But why?" the father exclaimed. "What in the hell has he got that decent boys don't have?"
"Barry needs me," she explained. "If it wasn't for me he'd be in worse trouble right now."
"Don't see him," the father commanded.
"I won't promise that," she countered. "Not ever."
Debbie's father "grounded" her. She was not allowed out of the house except for school and church for a solid two weeks. Debbie took her punishment without protest. She also disobeyed it. Working through her brother, Bill, always sympathetic to anyone's punishment because he had known so much of it himself, Debbie arranged for Barry to be waiting in his car at the corner of the street at midnight each night. Her father was working a night shift, and escape was a simple matter. After using pillows to simulate her sleeping form beneath the covers, Debbie simply went out the ground floor window of her bedroom, hurried to the corner, climbed into Barry's car, then zoomed off with him for hours of conversation.
There is some evidence that Debbie actually did have a good effect on Barry. He got a job, bought a car, kept away from crime. He even talked of returning to school for night courses. It would seem that Debbie's mother instincts had some influence. What their total results would have been we do not know, for the young people were separated permanently by an event caused by themselves.
It was especially interesting to her therapist that Debbie's first sexual experience with Barry occurred immediately after an evening when her mother instincts had been particularly strong. It occurred, too, during the period when she was believed to be sleeping in her bedroom, still grounded by the edict of her father. Here are the circumstances of that evening as Debbie recalled them for a case worker at a large city facility for unwed mothers:
Barry swung the car door open for Debbie and she climbed in.
"Any trouble?" he asked, grinning.
"Naw. Scratched myself on the bushes though." Debbie raised the skirt of her dress and looked at the long surface scars on her thighs. Barry looked too, still grinning, his dark eyes wild and anxious.
"You're a good chick," he said. "Come on, let's take off."
"Where to?" Debbie asked.
"How about the lake? Nobody will disturb us there."
"Great," she replied, boosting over to sit very close to the boy.
They parked beneath the shelter of trees when they arrived at the lake. It was very dark.
It was also a mild, lovely night, and it made Debbie dreamy and filled with deep things she did not quite understand, except that they concerned Barry and her love for him.
As they sat in the car, sometimes smoking, the car radio's volume turned down so that music issued softly, Debbie talked to Barry of his plans for the future. She asked if he had made arrangements for night school yet. He had not.
"But you have to darling," she said. "If you don't you'll be a ass."
"What's wrong with being a ass?" he asked, bringing his hand behind her neck and drawing her face very close to his.
She smiled, then said, "Nothing, I guess, as long as you're my ass."
"I am."
They kissed. There was something urgent about their kisses this night; something was bursting with energy and made up of fantasies of a life that was to come.
"Promise you'll see about it tomorrow," Debbie asked, breaking away.
"All right, chickie. For you, I'll promise."
"I'll go with you," she said. "Meet me right after school, and I'll take you down to the office where you can talk to a counselor about the courses you should take."
"All right, all right," he said kiddingly. "Here you go, hen-pecking already and we ain't even "
"Even what?" she asked a little breathlessly.
"Never mind," he said.
Barry gripped Debbie harder, bringing her close to his hard, young body and making her breasts crush against his chest. Now, their kisses became intensified. Soon, Barry's hands were on
Debbie's breasts. They kneaded madly at her sweater, bunching it upward. And then they were beneath the sweater and inside her bra, touching at flesh, tantalizing at the young nipples that grew and hardened beneath his touch.
Debbie sighed and sighed as Barry caressed her breasts. She moved her mouth from his, then buried her lips into his neck. And then she raised them and mouthed furiously at his ear, catching the whole of it within her mouth and holding it as she shot her piercing tongue deep. And her hands implored at the young maleness of his body. She caught him fully with her hands. She held him. She squeezed, released, and squeezed again, and soon Barry's moans matched her own. And soon there was no place to go except toward ultimate gratification.
Barry forced Debbie back on the car seat. His hands jammed her sweater up to her neck, and then they moved behind her to unhook her bra. He pulled it from her and dropped it on the floor of the car. And then he dived forward, catching one breast in his mouth and working furiously at the hard, waving nipple. Debbie's hands shot to his head. Her fingers curled into his thick, wavy hair. She pressed him close, then closer, then gently swayed his head from side to side, from one breast to the other, aiding his quest, aiding her own quest, too, and feeling her passions grow and grow and grow, just as the boy's sign of his passion had grown. Debbie's hands moved over his body and gripped him again. And again she brought the excitement of her manipulating fingers to the seventeen-year-old boy. Barry groaned. He raised. He stretched back and made an adjustment of his clothing. Then he leaned forward and again caught Debbie's breasts in his mouth as she felt the heat of male flesh pressing at her hand. She did not hesitate. She gripped him and manipulated him.
Soon, Barry was moved to provide a greater sign of his love for the fifteen-year-old girl. He pulled back from her moist, gleaming breasts. He stretched her next to him, made her legs dangle on the floor. And then he brought his hand slowly upward on the inner sides of those legs, caressing as they moved until they arrived at the place that had been created for more intense caresses. He provided them. Abundantly. And the action upon her body moved Debbie to greater effort. Now her hand was like a machine that would not stop. Now she circled and pulled and yanked and jammed and relaxed before starting the entire action over again. And all the time she knew the penetration of Barry's giving knew that miniature action conceived by children to show what they could expect when they came together in a blazing act of love. And soon it was determined that they would come together. Immediately.
Breathing hard, Barry stilled Debbie's speeding hand. He stopped the action of his own. And then he was half lying, half kneeling, above the fifteen-year-old girl, posing himself where they were determined that he should tread.
Debbie helped with the complications of their first sexual joining. She clutched him, then arched and received him. And then she raised and lifted and withdrew in a steady, thumping rhythm of sexual intercourse. She felt her passion rise, reach a peak, then scatter into a million pieces of separate feelings, each as intense as the other, each trying to outdo the other in the sensations they provided.
Debbie and Barry came together twice more that night. It was nearly dawn when Debbie crawled back inside her bedroom.
Regularly, they met at night. Regularly, they made intense love, without caution, without regard for anything except the closeness and thrill that they could achieve together. They achieved a great deal. More than some adults. Their bodies became attuned to each other's, and soon they had gone through enough refinements of their act of love to draw from each the same thrill at exactly the same time.
Within three months Debbie discovered that she was pregnant. She told Barry. He reacted nobly, but frightened. Then he stole a car, was arrested and sentenced to a two-year sentence at a boys' prison camp. And then Debbie told her parents of her pregnancy. After the initial shock, arrangements were made for her confinement at an unwed mothers' home, out of state and out of sight.
Other emotional elements become involved with the mother instinct of teenaged girls. Hostility is one of them. Hostility was no doubt a strong drawing force for Debbie's attraction to the criminally-centered boy, Barry. No doubt she gained some secret emotional satisfaction from the fact that her father was a law enforcement officer. Her love affair with a young criminal aligned her in complete opposition to the father.