#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Living In Thailand Forum >  >  > The Family Room >  >  Unusual Thai customs

## Pragmatic

Please don't take this wrong as I do not condone this practice. I've just learned about genital kissing of children in Thailand. I'd known, for a long time, of rumours, regarding Japanese parents carrying out the practice in years gone by. I then wondered if the ritual is still practiced today, if it ever happened at all, and was just talk?

I spoke to my missus about it and surprisingly she admitted she did it to our 3 children when they were babies. I was stunned as I never knew it was generally done by Thais in rural areas. I assume in some towns/cities also. She said that grandmothers do it to their grandchildren as well, boy or girl. The wife then explained to me as why they do it. Apparently they do it to show love/affection to the child. She says she stopped carrying out the practice once the baby begins to learn to walk age.

I Googled and came up with this. I'm totally amazed.




> _Ive read on several occasions that in some cultures, its seen as normal for parents and caregivers to perform sexual acts on babies and toddlers in order to calm them down and help them sleep. Cultures to which this disturbing practice has been attributed include those of Japan, Albania, the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, Bali, native Hawaiians, some native American tribes, parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, Australian aboriginals, and New Guineans. Does this really happen?	_*Matt Wells, United Kingdom*
> Not to go all Bill Clinton on you, but we need to define what we mean by performing a sexual act. For now lets just say that, based strictly on appearances, some cultures tolerate stuff that in the United States would get you branded as a pervert. Examples:
> 
> 
> In 2006 a Cambodian immigrant living in the Las Vegas area was charged with sexual assault for allegedly performing fellatio on her 6-year-old son. The womans attorney said what shed actually done was kiss the kids penis, once, when he was 4 or 5. A spokesperson for the Cambodian Association of America said that while this kind of thing wasnt widespread in Cambodia, some rural folk went in for it as an expression of love or respect, although in his experience never with children older than 1 or maybe 2.
> 
> 
> En route to being elected U.S. senator from Virginia in 2006, Jim Webb, onetime Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, was lambasted by his opponent for a passage in his 2001 novel _Lost Soldiers_ in which a Thai man picks up his naked young son and puts his penis in his mouth. Webb responded that he had personally witnessed such a greeting in a Bangkok slum.
> 
> ...

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## cyrille

They’re a rum lot round your way.

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## Maanaam

In less so-called "civilised" communities the parts of the body are less distinguished between. A finger, a penis, a mouth, a vulva...just body parts. While at the same time there is obviously a distinction between platonic and sexual.
I'm more alarmed at the ultra-ordox Jewish custom of sucking the penis of a newly circumcised baby. Quite a few of those babies end up with herpes.

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## Begbie

Well Prag the bad news is that your google search may have landed you in the sex offenders list at GCHQ.  The good news is that the Conservative Party will be contacting you shortly with a view to you standing at the next election.

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## Norton

> I was stunned as I never knew it was generally done by Thais in rural areas


Common stuff Prags.





> A finger, a penis, a mouth, a vulva...just body parts.


Yep.

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## Switch

Sounds to me, the uninitiated and unaware, that these practices were developed as a pacifier for unsettled babies. Probably routine in more impoverished families who had to make do with less.
It might have influences in later life for both adults and children, were it to be a common practice on anyone above walking age?

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## HuangLao

Uncouth barbarians...

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## jamescollister

One custom I find strange, now my mother is Irish and I lived in Ireland a few times, wakes where the body is laid out in the house, whisky in the morning, whisky in the day, whisky in the night.

Here, may be just local, Issan or Thailand general, don't know, but bodies get buried, if they had a bad death.
 Around here, just outside the local Wat wall, when their time, sentence is up, they get disinterred and taken home, or family members home for a big piss up and burnt the next day.

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## Maanaam

> Here, may be just local, Issan or Thailand general, don't know, but bodies get buried, if they had a bad death.
> Around here, just outside the local Wat wall, when their time, sentence is up, they get disinterred and taken home, or family members home for a big piss up and burnt the next day.


 Interesting. What's an example of a bad death? How long is the "sentence" (and you say that like it's a punishment)?

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## Latindancer

Perhaps he meant "bad breath".  :smiley laughing:

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## jamescollister

> Interesting. What's an example of a bad death? How long is the "sentence" (and you say that like it's a punishment)?


All about karma, good previous lives, you grow old and die in your sleep, bad karma takes it toll in this life.
How long you go in the ground for, guessing it's a monks call, longest grave time I know off was 5 years, brother of the guy who acted as my cousin during my wedding.
Story was shot dead in a drug deal in BKK.

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