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Yvain comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong
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I could be confusing Freudian stuff with real experimental results, but I seem to remember that children go through a stage up until about 6 where they're somewhat sexual, and then between that age and puberty the sex drive switches off or even into full reverse. This is the reason that young boys tend to think girls have cooties and are gross, and vice versa. It's evolution's way of saying "Not yet".
I can't find the article now, but an evolutionary-psychology noticed that the "cooties" concept seems to exist across all cultures (though obviously not always given the name "cooties"), and furthermore noticed that children often don't consider their siblings to have cooties. I.e. boys will feel that most girls have cooties, but not their sisters.
The psychologist offered this as an explanation: We evolved to find the people we grow up with to be not sexually attractive. This is a mechanism to avoid incest (which can result in genetic problems). However, if you live in a society, you don't want to find people who grow up with you, but who do not share genes with you, to be sexually unattractive (or else you might find no one within your whole society attractive), and thus this "cooties" sensation was placed by evolution so that we can avoid people of the opposite sex during this critical period so that later on, as adults, we may be sexually attracted to them.
That "explanation" sounds awfully just-so-story to me.
Why would evolution want to say this? What harm is there in sexual relations before puberty, when pregnancy can't result?