ABSTRACT
In viewing children’s drawings one is at times impressed by the advance information exhibited in matters sexual and reproductive. While most latency children show little interest in these activities other than to scribble some magic word on a wall, children from poor families tend to be uncommonly well aware. They are likely to witness scenes from which most middle-class children are carefully shielded. Restricted living quarters and crowding do not allow privacy. I have also observed similar precocious awareness in children whose parents have divorced and remarried. By and large these are intelligent, perceptive children, not to be confused with disturbed children who may exhibit an inability to set aside a compulsive preoccupation with the sexual organs.
