Childhood and Sexuality, 1st ed. 2018
Contemporary Issues and Debates
Studies in Childhood and Youth Series

This book explores how children engage with sex and sexuality. Building on a conceptual and legal grounding in sexuality studies and the new sociology of childhood, the authors debate the age of consent, teenage pregnany, sexual diversity, sexualisation, sex education and sexual literacy, paedophilia, and sex in the digital age. Whilst Moore and Reynolds recognise the necessity of child protection and safeguarding in the context of risk, danger and harm, they also argue that where these stifle children?s sexual knowledge, understanding, expression and experience, they contribute to a climate of fear, ignorance and bad experiences or harms. What is necessary is to balance safeguarding with enabling, and encourage judicious understandings that advance from a rigid developmental model to one that recognises pleasure and excitement in children?s nascent sexual lives. Exploring that balance through their chosen issues, they seek to encourage changed thinking in professional, personal and academic contexts, and speculate that children might teach adults something about the way they think about sex.  

Childhood and Sexuality will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals across a range of subjects and disciplines including sociology, social work, criminology, and youth studies.

1. Introduction.- 2. Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Sexuality.- 3. Law, Policy and Practice: National and International Dimension.- 4. The Age of Consent.- 5. Constructing and Managing Risk: The Example of Teenage Pregnancy.- 6. Sexualisation of Childhood.- 7. Diversity and Difference.- 8. Schooling Sexuality.- 9. Sexual Literacy.- 9. Sex, Sexuality and Social Media: A New and Pressing Danger.- 10. Conclusion: Reconciling Childhood and Sexuality. 

Allison Moore is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at Edge Hill University, UK.

Paul Reynolds is Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy at Edge Hill University, UK. 

Introduces readers to the tensions between the contradictory constructions of youth sexuality Explores the ways in which young people understand their sexuality and develop their sexual identity in a heteronormative society Presents a number of case studies