It is a common childhood problem, affecting many school age children, almost always boys, and causing much needless shame and guilt. The problem rarely has any great antecedent emotional overtones, but to the extent that the child is shamed and humiliated by peers and adults, has to inflict great emotional distress. Because the basic facts of causation and cure are so straightforward, this condition is doubly distressing to me.
Many adults can remember knowing or knowing of such a child growing up.
Typically a boy, he was the object of hushed discussion or outright mocking. It would seem so unacceptable for a school age child to have a bowel movement in the pants, that adults and other children cannot conceive how such a thing might happen. Actually, it usually happens rather simply. On the great bell curve of life, some folks are by nature rather more colonically sluggish than others. That is to say, they are by nature prone to constipation.