Featured Image Credit: Maskot/Getty images/ milorad kravic/Getty Images
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Parenting, Women's Health
Kya Buller
Topics: Sex and Relationships, Parenting, Women's Health
It goes without saying that our parents pass down traits to us - but it turns out there's one pretty awkward one that you probably don't know about.
As the famous poem by Philip Larkin declares: "They f**k you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do."
It turns out the late Larkin may have been on to more than even he understood at the time.
According to experts, there's a NSFW part of ourselves that may be down to biology, baby.
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This is probably going to make you cringe - a lot - but as they say, the more you know, the further you go, so do read on.
In case you hadn't already guessed... it's something sexual.
In fact, it relates to your bedroom kinks.
Justin Lehmiller, research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and scientific advisor to sex-toy retailer Lovehoney told Glamour that a kink is 'any type of non-mainstream sexual interest.'
To be clearer, he added: "A fetish is a specific subtype of kink defined by a heightened fascination with a certain object, body part, or bodily fluid. In other words, fetishes tend to have a sensory component wherein people are drawn to the feel, taste, smell, or look of a particular thing.
"All fetishes are kinks, but not all kinks are fetishes."
Got it.
But how on earth does it relate to our parents? And their... sex lives?!
Emme Witt, a BDSM educator and dominatrix, told Cosmopolitan the notion 'isn't totally far fetched,' due to the fact some seem to be born early on in life.
She added: "I've spoken to quite a few people in the BDSM community who seem to have developed an interest in kink from a young age. They watch a superhero movie and wish they were the victim instead of the hero, being kidnapped and bound in ropes."
Sam D. Hughes, a Ph.D. Candidate in Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, added: "There is some limited evidence of genetics being associated with specific personality traits and other conditions which are, in turn, associated with kink and fetish interest."
He then used the example of being into BDSM potentially being born in ways 'such as always volunteering to be tied up during Cops and Robbers.'
Dr. Lehmiller went on to add: "For some people, nipples are extraordinarily sensitive. For other people, there’s just no sensation whatsoever. And if your body just happens to have that heightened level of sensitivity, you might be very drawn to various forms of nipple play including more intense BDSM versions of it with nipple clamps and so forth. So I think part of it is that general sensitivity in different parts of our body. That could also have a genetic component to it.”