Both the findings and the limitations of numeric milestone research in sexology have a bearing on the pedagogical status of pleasure, as well as the cultural underpinnings of the notion of a psychosexual milestone. An overview is offered of international data pertaining to the chronology of three "milestones" in sexual autobiography: first orgasm (orgasmarche), first ejaculation (oigarche), and first wet dream (nocturnal emission). Methodological problems associated with the measurement of these variables are discussed. These problems are then situated in a culturalist perspective. It is concluded that orgasms are cultural artifacts in terms of their chronological occurrence as well as perceived salience, necessity, and "age appropriateness".
This paper identifies and critically assesses various research approaches to subjective and cultural-historical notions of life stages through the lens of comparative-cultural, psychometric, discursive psychological and ethnographic perspectives. Included is an overview of 48 studies of subjective attributions of life stages covering 14 national settings, with a discussion of their limitations. Possibilities for cross-fertilizing critical gender theory with life stage theory are briefly discussed. It is suggested that analytic notions of citationality and hegemony, both pioneered in the context of gender studies, may be productively appropriated in cultural psychology.Stages of maturity-studied as 'Ages-of-Man' by classicists and medievalists-are both mundane biographic practices and academic demarcations, interfacing extensively with social markers such as virginity/sexuality, masculinity/femininity and initiation/education. Most 20th-century research literature on stages of life has aspired towards a general picture of segmenting the human 'life course' and does not prioritize subjective views on the stages of the life course. It is the goal of this paper to review and assess various research perspectives on cultural and self-defined stages of the life course, in contrast with universalist projections.
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