What you’re describing is known as situational homosexuality/pseudo-homosexuality, and it’s been observed for hundreds if not thousands of years in single-sex environments like boarding schools and prisons. But people who have these experiences generally do not identify as homosexual. Historically most of them they wouldn’t even have had any concept of sexual orientation, and in the modern world they tend to consider themselves straight or maybe bisexual.
Even outside single-sex environments, the number of people who’ve ever had a same-sex partner is much larger than the number of people who actually describe themselves as gay or bi. This CDC report on a 2006-2008 study of sexual behavior found that among Americans age 25-44, 6% of men and 12% of women had at some point had sex with a same-sex partner (see graph on page 9). However, the same study asked respondents to label their sexual orientation and only about 4% of women and 3% of men chose either gay or bisexual (see tables on pages 29-30).
Again, you’re mixing up sexual orientation and sexual behavior. An individual’s behavior might very well change if they went from a single-sex environment to a mixed-sex environment, but that doesn’t tell us much about their sexual orientation. We have plenty of examples of people who engage in sexual behavior that goes against their professed sexual orientation.
I say “professed” not to suggest dishonesty, but because we have no objective way of measuring sexual orientation and can only go by what people say about themselves. There are people who say that their sexual orientation has changed over time, but someone who came from a single-sex world where they didn’t even know that heterosexuality existed isn’t going to be in a good position to tell us whether their sexual orientation has changed or whether they were straight all along and just didn’t know it.
I don’t think convents and monasteries were typically as isolated as you seem to be assuming. A child who grew up in a convent or monastery presumably would have encountered servants, visitors, tradespeople, other foundlings and children sent there to be educated, etc.
Sure, such places do/have existed, but I think that such strict, isolated religious communities are both rare and unlikely to be given many children to raise.
Until about the 19th century nearly all babies were breastfed by either their mothers or wetnurses, so before that I’m not sure an isolated bunch of monks would have even known what they could safely feed a baby if someone did happen to bring them one. I’m vague on this but I’ve heard that historically children often weren’t weaned until they were at least 2-3 years old, in which case a child old enough to be weaned would be old enough to have some awareness that women exist.
Again, we are not talking about the norm here. Just that such things have certainly happened.
Best option was goat’s milk; people also used cow and horse milk. Pap (bread soaked in water or milk) and panada (cereals ground very fine and stewed), fruit juice and rice water, and watered molassas. All kinds of things.
Well, your first post on the subject made it sound like you thought it was the norm for convents and monasteries to be extremely isolated single-sex environments. I don’t think it’s impossible that some children might at some point in history have been brought up in an isolated monastery/convent where they never met a woman/man, but unless there’s some actual evidence of this then I’d consider it far from certain.
Since the Bible talks a lot about men, women, marriage, sex, childbearing, etc., a child raised in even the most isolated religious community would presumably hear plenty about the opposite sex. They’d also likely see artistic depictions of saints and figures from the Bible…and not necessarily ones wearing modest robes. Adam and Eve are usually shown nude or nearly nude in religious art, and St. Sebastian is often depicted in a weirdly sexy manner.
I didn’t say there was nothing but breastmilk that a baby could eat, I said I doubted that a bunch of monks living in an isolated monastery would have known what else to feed a baby. This doesn’t seem like the sort of information that would normally be of much use to monks, and if they’re in an isolated religious community where they’re not allowed to interact with women they’d have little opportunity to ask anyone who would know.