Hatching Babies and Stork Deliveries: Risk and Regulation in the Construction of Children's Sexual Knowledge

Abstract

Children's access to sexual knowledge has always been considered 'risky' and controversial due to the fraught relationship between childhood and sexuality. Based on focus groups with children and their parents, the authors explore the relationship between risk and regulation associated with providing children with accurate knowledge about sexuality. Two main issues are examined: parents' anxieties associated with educating their children about sexuality; and how children actively build narratives around relationships and sexual knowledge based on the fragments of information available to them. The authors argue that dominant constructions of childhood and childhood innocence negate the effective education of children around sexuality, gender and ethical relationships. Additionally, they examine the tensions that exist for many parents around the discourse of child protection and the ways in which this impacts on their education of young children about sexual matters.Children's access to knowledge about sexuality and ethical relationships has crucial implications for their health and well-being, not just in the early years but also throughout their lives. This knowledge can build children's competencies and resilience, contributing to new cultural norms of non-violence in gendered and sexual relationships. It also develops children's capacity to understand their own sexual subjectivity, which is critical for fostering their literacy with regard to sexual knowledge and is essential to their rights as sexual citizens (Robinson, forthcoming). However, debates continue about whose role it is to provide children with sexual knowledge, at what age it is appropriate to impart certain information, and whether this education should take place in the home or in schools. This area of education has been generally considered parents' responsibility, but schools have increasingly become sites for the introduction of sexuality and relationships education. For many parents and educators, teaching children about these issues is fraught with difficulties and anxieties. These tensions can result in the family or schooling avoiding or not effectively addressing sex education with children (Robinson & Davies, 2008a;Goldman, 2010).Based on focus groups with children and their parents, we explore the relationship between risk and regulation associated with providing children with accurate knowledge about sexuality. We address two critical areas: firstly, we examine parents' anxieties associated with educating their children about sexuality. Children's access to sexual knowledge has always been considered 'risky' and controversial due to the fraught relationship between childhood and sexuality. Some adults mistakenly reduce sexuality to sexual contact and sexual orientation, rather than conceptualising sexuality as a central component of our subjectivity. Reducing sexuality to sexual contact and sexual orientation often contributes to the moral panic that is associated with children and sexuality. In our research, parents' anxi...

Reconceptualising Family: Negotiating Sexuality in a Governmental Climate of Neoliberalism

“…Silin (1992Silin ( , 1997 has continued to stimulate, provoke and invite educators and a more general readership to question the ways in which knowledge is constructed and communicated to both children and adults; that is, to consider what is included and what is silenced. We argue that it is important to include subjugated knowledges and difficult knowledges (knowledge that often causes difficulties or anxieties in individuals, especially in terms of discussing these issues with children) (Davies & Robinson, 2010;Robinson, 2013) in children's early education, such as queer families, the complexities of queer kinship relations, non-biological formations of family, such as fostering and adoption, and alternative reproductive practices and technologies through which many young children are now conceived. In addition, children's early education needs to address alternative understandings of gender and sexuality that more accurately reflect the diverse family structures in which many children are being raised.…”

Parental interpretations of “childhood innocence”

“…Indeed, the research evidence examining the behavioural effects of talking to children and young people about sexual matters offers no support for the argument that it accelerates the onset of sexual activity or increases sexual risk taking (Diiorio et al, 2003;Family Health International, 2002;Kirby, 1997;Kirby, 2001;Miller, 1998;Miller et al, 2001;Noar et al, 2006). This study provides support for previous work Davies and Robinson (2010) and Robinson (2012aRobinson ( , 2012b in a different cultural context (Australia). Overall, the desire to maintain innocence certainly did appear to strongly influence parents' reactions and behaviour in situations relating to their sexual communication with their children.…”

“…However, despite these reservations, the vast majority of parents expressed a desire for their children to be well-informed about the topics surrounding sexuality and relationships. Davies and Robinson (2010) also found evidence that parents were acutely aware of the need for early sexuality education, in part to counteract cultural discourses of heteronormativity (the cultural bias of viewing opposite sex relationships as the norm); however, parents' approaches were still heavily influenced by the view of the innocent, nonsexual child.…”

“…4 research exploring the parental concerns and anxieties associated with sexuality education at young ages (Ballard and Gross, 2009;Davies and Robinson, 2010;Frankham, 2006;Geasler et al, 1995;Stone et al, 2013;Walker, 2001).…”

Doing Sexuality Research with Children: Ethics, Theory, Methods and Practice

“…Framed primarily within a feminist post-structuralist and queer theoretical framework, we understand sexuality as a historically and culturally contingent category of subjectivity, and a complex signifying system founded on individual and institutional relations of power. Sexuality encompasses much more than sexual practice, and describes a complex ideological position into which one is interpolated, based partly on the culture's mapping of bodies and desires, and partly on one's response to this interpolation (Cossman, 2007;Davies & Robinson, 2010). Sexuality and access to sexual knowledge is relevant to children's and young people's awareness and understandings of their bodies, desires and sense of self, impacting on their health and well-being.…”