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3 - A Sociological Exploration of Childhood Sexuality

A Discursive Analysis of Parents’ and Children’s Perspectives

from Children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

By
Kerry H. Robinson  and
Cristyn Davies
Edited by
Sharon Lamb  and
Jen Gilbert
Sharon Lamb
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Jen Gilbert
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto
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Summary

This chapter brings a feminist poststructuralist and queer theoretical lens to research with both parents and young children in Australia to explore children's sexual subjectivities as they are discursively constructed. The authors analyze parent's narratives of their children's sexual development, revealing the competing discourses that inform these parents' understandings, knowledge, and heterosexism. In addition, the authors explore narratives provided by children themselves, and through these narratives show how children are active in constructing understandings of sexuality through the often limited, gendered, and heteronormative accounts that they are given. This chapter includes a comprehensive overview of the research and theory on children's sexual development.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development
Childhood and Adolescence
 , pp. 54 - 75
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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