Labour Party Councillor Pamela Kearns shocked attendees at a public meeting about sex-education on Tuesday night when she informed the crowd that “babies do actually masturbate”. The packed meeting, held in Templeogue and open to the public, was organised by LetKidsBeKids, a group of parents concerned about proposals to radically change sex-education in primary and secondary schools.
At the meeting, speakers pointed to the recent report by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment which referred to World Health Organisation guidelines on sex-education. Those guidelines recommended teaching children between 0 and 4 years old about “early childhood masturbation”. Parents at the meeting raised serious concerns over whether this was age-appropriate and said they were concerned the new curriculum sexualised children. Councilor Kearns, who is a pre-school teacher, responded by saying: “I don’t agree with pretty much everything that has been talked about here this evening…I’m a mother, and I’m a parent. I’m also a pre-school teacher. ”
“Babies do masturbate, by the way, it’s a recognised fact,” she claimed. They don’t know they’re doing it, they just know they’re touching themselves and they get pleasure from it. They don’t call it masturbation.”
There were gasps of shock and strong negative reactions in the room to her statement. The Labour Party has yet to respond to the councillor’s claims
