The latency period is chiefly characterized by an attempt on the part of the little girl to understand and master her environment. It is marked by a tremendous growth physically and mentally. She is interested in everything, in everything that gives her a chance to advance herself physically: rope-jumping, doll-playing, ball-playing, swimming, climbing, running; there is sometimes very little that she does, feels, or thinks in this period that distinguishes her in any very important manner from a little boy of the same age. She may be a bit more obedient, a bit better about doing her homework than a boy, but not dramatically so. We may ask, then, what nature’s intention in bringing on this latency period might be? Let me put it this way. Nature, plainly and simply, wishes to give the child a chance to grow a little mentally, to learn to master her body and mind, to integrate the earlier phase of development, to learn to form personal relationships so that when she comes to the next great step in development, the phase marked by menstruation and female maturation, she will be ready. Think what would happen if the little girl were plunged from the stresses and strains of infantile sexuality directly into full sexual readiness. Her body might be ready, but psychologically she would have no understanding of her environment, no idea of personal relationships, no sense of her self or of her abilities. She would have, as the actress Elizabeth Taylor noted of herself and her reaction to a too-early plunge into grown-up experiences, “a child’s mind in a woman’s body.” Nature _intends_ no such dilemma for women. She has a step-by-step plan which leads the woman, if parents co-operate, safely to the haven of physical _and_ psychological maturity. The latency period is also marked by a very close relationship to the parents, particularly to the father. However, there are now no conscious sexual feelings attached to him. She admires and values her father above all other things and wants his admiration and very high regard too. Most fathers instinctively give their little daughters a great deal of love and reassurance during this phase, and the child basks in it as a flower in the sun. She strives to do the things that will please him, make him notice her, make him love her. His responses are studied assiduously, and it is in this way that she receives her first real experience with the all-important feminine need to “please her man.” The feelings of joy she gets from his pleasure in her accomplishments, physical and mental, are the precursors of the rewards she will later prize so highly when bestowed on her by a loving husband. As you might suspect, this period is very important to her development into full womanhood with its varied psychological give-and-take. If the father seriously fails in his role during this period he can do irreparable harm to the growing girl.