Mother, the All-Powerful: An Examination of Childhood and Mythological Fantasy

Young children are disarmingly honest. With little prodding and no self-conscious cover-up, they will tell you about how they see the world and the people in it. They are particularly articulate about the people closest to their hearts—their parents, their siblings, and themselves.

In the decades I have spent working with children (Mohacsy, 1968), I have become fascinated with their intricate explanations of gender differences: why Mommy is different from Daddy, why big sister is different from little brother. Children notice the differences in external genitalia at a very young age. Then their minds go to work in an almost-literal attempt to put all the pieces together. In the following four examples, I will let the youngsters I have known speak for themselves.

A 3-year-old girl was watching her mother diaper her infant sister. Looking at the naked child, she said to her mother with the utmost certainty, “She doesn't have a penis, but it will grow.”

A 5-year-old boy saw his mother wrapped in a towel as she emerged from her shower. The edge of the towel had slipped, revealing one of her breasts. The boy pointed and asked, “What's that, Mommy?” When she identified it as her breast, her son looked frightened and quickly pulled up his shirt. “Oh, no,” he said, “I lost mine.” It is clearly an upward displacement of his castration fear.

A 2-year-old girl was playing in a pile of clean laundry. She snatched a red sock out of a bunch of socks of many different colors. Dangling it between her legs, she declared, “Now, I am Daddy.”

Another girl, 3 years old, was being given her bath. As she was washed, she began to touch her vagina. Then, after thinking a bit, she told this story: “I had a penis, but I climbed on a chair and fell off. My penis broke. Now I only have a hole.”

Underlying each child's comment is the belief in some kind of perfect androgynous whole. The complete person, in this initial view of the