Allison Moore

Absent but present: a critical analysis of the representation of sexuality in recent youth policy in the UK

Current youth policy in England and Wales utilises ‘transition’ as the major framework for understanding young peoples movement from ‘youth’ to ‘adulthood’. Underpinning this are developmental assumptions about who young people are and who they ‘should’ become, especially with regard to sexuality. ‘Childhood’ and ‘youth’ are conceptualised as asexual or pre-sexual categories and those young people who are deemed to have sexual knowledge are problematised. Transitions to adulthood are inescapably heteronormative: the movement to adulthood is not simply about becoming an adult, but about becoming a man or a woman conforming to compulsory heterosexuality. Current youth policy says little about young peoples sexuality and when it does it frequently conflates sexual behaviour with sexual health. Drawing on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and, in particular, his concepts of field, habitus and symbolic violence, it will be argued that despite the rhetoric of participation, engagement and inclusion in current youth policy it continues to perpetuate and naturalise the symbolic order between ‘adults’ and young people and continues to position youth sexuality as potentially dangerous.

'I' and 'We' Identities – an Eliasian Perspective on Lesbian and Gay Identities'

Lesbian and gay sociology has witnessed a reflexive turn in recent years, which emphasises choice, self-creation and self-determination in the formation of sexual identities. Individuals are involved in, what GIDDENS (1991) called, a ‘project of self’ or a ‘reflexive biography’, which allows them to engage in a dynamic and constantly evolving process of defining and re-defining their self-identity. Identity becomes fluid, fragmented and plastic. In a recent issue of this journal, Brian Heaphy argued that such accounts of lesbian and gay reflexivity are partial and fail to take account of the ways in which structural factors continue to limit ones choice narrative and he proposed a move towards a reflexive sociology, rather than a sociology of reflexivity. This article seeks to develop Heaphys argument further and suggests that the limitation of theories of reflexivity lies in their inability to adequately account for the continued significance of collectivity, interdependency and human relations in shaping an individuals identity. Drawing on Norbert Elias’ figurational sociology, it will be argued that against a reflexive model of identity that privileges individualism, choice and creativity over collectivity and material constraints, there is a pressing need to revisit and re-establish our interdependent relationships with one another.

Reflections from the classroom: Towards a radical pedagogy for early years practitioners:

This article comprises some critical reflections on the teaching of a second year undergraduate module called Children’s Cultural Worlds in which students are required to engage with original studies which are then used to stimulate self-reflection and engagement with wider issues relating to our understanding of children’s place in the social world. It will be argued that when individual memories are shared, it is possible to identify continuities and discontinuities in childhood experiences as well as the intersections between childhood and other social divisions such as gender, class and ethnicity. The requirement that students recall and reflect on their childhood memories and share them with others is a way of students learning through their own experiences, reflecting on their views and values. Furthermore, as it will be shown, it opens up spaces for alternative values and viewpoints to emerge about how we might ‘regulate’ early childhood because ‘When we tell stories and process them, using reflective dialogues, we create the possibility of change in ourselves and others’.

For Adults Only? Young People and (Non)Participation in Sexual Decision Making

The term ‘participation’ is often used to refer to children and young peoples involvement in decision-making processes but it also denotes the individual decisions that they make about their everyday lives. With regards to sexuality, children and young people are routinely excluded from policy formation and decision-making processes, due to assumptions about their sexual immaturity and lack of competence. The right of children to participate in the decisions that affect their lives is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), but the articles of the UNCRC are commonly grouped into three categories referred to as the ‘3Ps’: protection rights, provision rights and participation rights. This article will argue that, because of the refusal to recognise the sexually agentic child, childrens protection rights outweigh their participation rights. Recognising the right to participate in sexual decision-making requires childrens protection rights to be balanced with their rights to participation

Understanding Children’s Participation through an Eliasian Lens: Habitus as a Barrier to Children’s Everyday Participation Rights

In this article, we will present our research findings and argue that whilst a focus on the rights of young children to participate has helped to influence the development of participatory approaches in a range of children’s settings, aimed at enabling their opinions to not only be heard but be acted upon, this does not seem have spread into areas of childrens everyday life. Thus, in their everyday life interactions children’s rights continue to be denied or given entitlement in the basis of assumptions about the social category to which they belong. Furthermore opportunities continue to be missed to make links between the everyday and the societal, political and legal contexts by those wishing to further childrens participation rights. This has implications for childrens developing citizenship and their ability to participate in wider society. Drawing on the sociology of Norbert Elias, we will argue that some of the barriers to children’s participation in and control over their everyday lives are attributable to their positioning as ‘children’ in opposition to ‘adults’ and the concomitant assumptions about their capacities, or lack thereof. These assumptions are evident in a variety of formal discourses underpinned by developmentalism and protectionism, including law and policy, but they are also internalised and perpetuated in what Elias called the ‘habitus’; unconscious and embodied behaviours and dispositions that have been shaped by wider social structures.

Sex and Sexuality Education

This chapter explores sexuality education (noting our use of sexuality for sex in the introduction), principally through the UK example. This is not because the UK example represents a typical system or policy, since there is no common framework or approach. It does, however, cover many of the key themes that reappear in different forms and ways in those countries—mainly North American, Australasian and Europe—that have adopted formal sex education. The focus of discussion is on institutional sex education, either state or private funded but recognised and, to some extent, regulated by the state. Whilst public education developed in the nineteenth century, there was a concentration on the development of sex education after the Second World War, when most nations engaged in ‘piecemeal social engineering’, including comprehensive strategies for education for all children with different degrees of state interventions in welfare (Mishra 1977). This focus on schooling does leave open the question of other forms of sexual education. Foucault’s (1978) analyses of the pedagogisation of children’s sex points to the educative function of most social institutions, such as health and youth services, and social structures such as the family. Whilst we will pay some attention to these contributions to sexuality education, their diversity of messages, indirectness of communication and different degrees of engagement with sexuality make it difficult to capture their impact in the UK example, and the cultural diversity of different nations makes the picture far more complex.

The Sexualisation of Childhood

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, concerns over the ‘premature sexualisation of childhood’ have been widely articulated by politicians, child ‘experts’, children’s charities and members of the public in a number of countries across, what Hawkes and Egan (2008a) call, the Anglophone West. Rooted in, and an extension of, claims that Western childhoods are under threat or in crisis—see, for example, Neil Postman’s (1983) The Disappearance of Childhood, Sue Palmer’s (2007) Toxic Childhood and Frank Furedi’s (2001) Paranoid Parenting—debates over the sexualisation of childhood focus on, amongst other things, ‘age inappropriate’ clothing, explicit sexual imagery in music videos, television programmes and films, and easy, frequently unfettered, access to sexual content on the internet. The public consensus and common sense assumptions about the impact of the sexualisation of culture on constructions of childhood in the abstract and the lived experiences of children in reality, are that it is inherently negative and damaging; that girls, in particular, come to see themselves and their worth only in terms of their adherence to narrowly defined normative standards of physical attractiveness. These fears have provoked an “incitement to discourse” (Foucault 1978: 17) and the production of specialised knowledge by concerned experts about how best to respond to these pressing dangers.

Diversity and Difference

Since the mid-twentieth century, the organisation and expression of sexuality has been undergoing significant change. Jeffrey Weeks has claimed that we are living in “the midst of a long, unfinished but profound, revolution that has transformed the possibilities of living sexual diversity and creating intimate lives” (Weeks 2007: x). See also Anthony Giddens’ (1992) ‘Transformation of Intimacy’ thesis). Furthermore, he posits that this revolution has been “overwhelmingly beneficial to the vast majority of people in the West” (ibid).

Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Childhood and Sexuality

In this first chapter, we want to preface a focus on childhood and sexuality by locating these connected fields within social and cultural theories that seek to explain how societies function, develop and change. These theories provide frameworks for understanding and explaining different perspectives on, and arguments about, how childhood and sexuality intersect. What should be stressed from the start is that neither childhood nor sexuality are things in themselves. They are concepts used to describe social phenomena – particular populations and practices – and as such are contestable in the boundaries they draw and the meanings they convey. We have outlined both the common framings and fluidities of these concepts in the introduction. The purpose of this theoretical chapter is to map both the conceptual underpinnings of their current orthodoxies as a prelude to the critical case studies in subsequent chapters, and articulate the different critical arguments that identify causes, consequences and impacts of attendant ideologies and policies on children, parents, families, those who work with children and how childhood and sexuality is represented in society.

Conclusion: Reconciling Childhood and Sexuality

In this book, we have attempted to explore some of the key issues, perceived problems and areas of dispute around the contentious terrain of childhood and sexuality. The entire text has adopted a ‘problem-centred’ structure. The introductory chapters summarised the range of theoretical positions that compete to provide explanations and evaluations of childhood and sexuality and also the legal and policy terrain that represents political and cultural discourses around childhood and sexuality. The remaining seven chapters were devoted to contemporary ‘problems’ concerning childhood and sexuality. In doing so, we have recognised two broad paradigms—the dominant developmental paradigm that prioritises child protection and an alternative paradigm that recognises children as rights bearing individuals and adopts a child centred position.