Is it "typical" / "normal" to be an AAM?

[Phossu]

Thinking back to my experience as a minor, I was absolutely an AAM. I found many of the adults in my life sexually attractive, and would have jumped at the opportunity to have sex with these people. I always thought this was "normal", in that most people experienced attraction to adults as minors. Of course many things I thought were "normal" at that time are anything but.

So the question is, are most minors adult-attracted? Or are they a "sexual minority"?

It's also worth keeping in mind that even if it is typical to be an AAM, they can still be oppressed. Even if the overwhelming majority of minors are AAMs, these desires are still stigmatized.

Curious to hear the forum's thoughts.

[Fragment]

I think it's especially hard to answer this when we live in a world where the porn that minors is exposed to is adult porn. Porn of their peers is illegal so their sexuality can more easily latch onto the adults they are orgasming over.

By the time I was masturbating I was already a MAP, though. I liked the smaller boys in my grade, or boys in grades below me. There was one boy who was in grade 10 when I was in grade 8 that I liked. But he was a late bloomer and less developed than me. Otherwise I don't think I've ever had a single instance where I've been strongly attracted to someone older.

I don't know how socially conditioned it is, but it does seem that hetero females, in general, will prefer peers or old whereas males often prefer peer or younger mates. It's definitely not universal, though. And I'm not sure how much that would change culturally. I guess reproductive fertility does tend to have a narrower window for females than males, though. I'm sure there's probably some level of evolutionary impetuous.

[PorcelainLark]

An idea I toyed with was that just as we MAPs have an AoA, so do teleiophiles. It was in the context of people that say they couldn't understand why people found children attractive. A teleiophile might find a 16 year old attractive because she resembles an adult, just as a pedophile might find a 14 year old attractive because they resemble a child.
So, yeah, I think it is normal to have an ideal body type related to age.
Also, that could be part of why there's a stigma; people empathize with being attracted to someone older, but they retroactively feel disgusted at anyone that took an interest in them at the time, because once you reach the ideal age any interest in someone younger feels abhorrent. On a related note, a young woman that wants to be seen as mature, doesn't want to have a partner that's attracted to her because she looks younger, since it defeats part of the fantasy for her.