Abstract
The relationship between children and sexuality in many Western countries is precarious and controversial, impacting the kind of research that has been undertaken in the area of children's sexual subjectivities, especially in the social sciences. This research has been, and continues to be, highly regulated. Human sexuality has largely been constituted in universal biomedical and psychological discourses that view pubertal changes in adolescence as marking the beginning of sexual development. Children's physical maturity is considered to lead to a more heightened curiosity in sexuality as they reach puberty. Piagetian (Piaget, 1959, 1960) human development has been central to these scientific perspectives that reinforce and understanding of children as being too emotionally, cognitively and physically immature to grasp concepts about sexuality, which have been widely viewed as 'adult knowledge'. As a consequence the figure of the child has come to represent 'innocence', especially sexual innocence, and is the focus of broad sociocultural, political and legal regulatory practices in order to protect and prolong childhood innocence (Corteen & Scratton, 1997; Robinson 2013). The discourse of childhood innocence has operated to reinforce the perspective in many Western countries that sexual development begins in puberty, impacting family and schooling practices about children's access to knowledge about sexuality throughout childhood and into adolescence.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development: Childhood and Adolescence |
Editors | Sharon Lamb, Jen Gilbert |
Place of Publication | U.K. |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 54-75 |
Number of pages | 22 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781107190719 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- Western countries
- children
- sex