Introduction
Children are considered innocent and non-participants in the political life of adults. They are considered to exist in a space beyond the socio-cultural and political realm. It is ardently believed that the innocence of a child is not marred by the partisan politics of the time. However, we could have hardly been successful in saving the children from the ugliest political movements of the world. Often children have been used as a shield to the torturous political agendas. Protests against abuses of child innocence have been prevalent, and protection movement has remained a long tradition. The child victim has often been stereotypically portrayed as a nymphet or Lolita; however, many believe that the portrayal of childhood innocence is a negative stereotype.
For instance, the depiction of child abuse in mass media or books has always stressed on the betrayal or assault on childhood innocence. Innocence is a powerful symbol that may create public revulsion against sexual abuse. On the other hand, it must be understood that the very concept of child abuse may become titillation for the abuser. In an age where childhood innocence is both the most debated and commercially marketed issue, it is necessary to understand the exact extent of the myth or reality behind the concept of childhood innocence. This essay tries to understand the concept of childhood innocence as portrayed by different scholars and the idea of child sexuality and innocence together.
Child Innocence and Child Sexuality
The concept of innocence was probably popularized to fight against child abuse. The popular idea of childhood innocence, thus, helps to stigmatize child abuser. However, a child who is observed to violate the discourse of innocence forfeits her claim from the protection as she had broken the code of innocence.
In the nineteenth century, laws in many countries like the US and UK regulated child sexuality in order to protect the concept of innocence in young children. This resulted in unquestioned intervention in children’s natural sexual curiosity and exploration. Further, the association of the perceived immorality to sexual relations resulted in further censorship become both a public and private activity in the Victorian era. Michel Foucault pointed out in his book History of Sexuality that children were regularly constructed about the moral and expected sexual behaviour, a construct and policing, that is still attached to a child today (Foucault 28). In schools, the authorities were constantly vigilant regarding the sexual activity of students:
The space for classes, the shape of the tables, the planning of the recreation lessons, the distribution of the dormitories (with or without partitions, with or without curtains), the rules for monitoring bedtime and sleep periods – all this referred, in the most prolix manner, to the sexuality of children. (Foucault 28)
At the beginning of the twentieth-century scientific knowledge of physiology and psychology of children established that childhood was a separate state of being than adulthood. Thus, there arose different care and facilities for children, and there appeared many specific diseases for childhood, including premature sexuality (Robinson, Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The contradictory 48). The popular construct of child heterosexuality was linked with monogamy, and hence, masturbation among children was closely monitored and was enforced as a taboo by the authorities and parents (Foucault 31). It was during this era that uncontrolled sexual desire among children was considered a threat to the concept of childhood innocence.
It was not until the mid-twentieth that treatise to break the mirage of childhood innocence was introduced in academia. Sigmund Freud was the first to challenge the comfort zones of child sexuality and innocence. He challenged the then-popular idea of dormant sexuality among children and positioned his idea of active sexual need among children. Freud pointed out that the initial feeling of children that established their connection to the world was through their mother and the feeling that a child harboured for her mother was sexual in nature. According to Freud, before children undergo social construction, their natural instincts search for sexual pleasure the gratification in any part of the body (133). It is through social discourse that they suppress their sexual behaviour as it is constructed as perverse. According to Freud, suppression of childhood sexuality was caused due to neurosis among adults (Robinson, Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The contradictory 50).
Freud pointed out that imposition of the “veil” of innocence on child sexuality will not help in keeping the “child’s imagination pure” (Freud 132). He believes that concealment will intensify the curiosity among boys and girls regarding sexuality. Freud points out that it is impossible to maintain the ignorance of a child from all things sexual as a child’s interaction with the world increases. Freud believes this game of hiding and seek only increases a child’s curiosity, and when he receives some information, his desire to know more is kindled resulting in secret sexual gratification that already corrupts his imagination.
Thus, Freud believes that the “child already sins while his parents still believe that the does not know what sin is.” (Freud 132-133). According to Freud, it is “bad conscience” that results in adults creating a mystery about sexual matters in front of a child. Freud rejects the idea that there is no sexual instinct among children and that they become aware of sexuality once they reach puberty or when their sexual organs start to develop (133). According to Freud, a “newborn baby brings sexuality with it into the world, certain sexual sensations accompanying its development as suckling and during early childhood”, and he stresses that very few children escape sexual encounters before puberty (134). Normal sexual development in childhood results in a healthy mature heterosexual behaviour among adults (Freud 134).
Post-Freudian analysis of child sexuality resulted in a mass evaluation of child sexuality in western countries. This resulted in the identification of a wide prevalence of child sexual abuse. However, the general discourse of child sexual abuse was the abuse of helpless, vulnerable children at the hands of powerful adults. Apparently, even in this era, children’s sexual abuse has been implicitly linked to their innocence as they are said to be abused at the hands of a powerful adult. Even sexual encounter of children with other children has been considered as “non-consensual” (Robinson 50). Hence, the discourse of child innocence essentially disassociates child sexuality from the child, thus creating a necessity of the process.
Child Innocence, Sexuality, and Morality
The relation between a child and sexuality has been increasingly marred with the fear of child sexual abuse and has intensified the moral panic about childhood innocence. Authorities have used moral panic as a tool to retain hegemonic control over the values and practices of the society (Robinson, Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The contradictory 54). The moral panic exists in societies that are risk-conscious and was observable more prominently in late modernity. With the rise of uncertainties of late modernity, there arose greater discourse with strong moral elements (Robinson, Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The contradictory 54).
Childhood innocence and panic about child sexuality has been used as an easy tool to construe protectionist moral discourses. Robinson points out: “A proliferation of social anxiety and moral panic has historically been associated with children and sexuality, which has carried through to contemporary times” (Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The contradictory 55). Thus, the panic regarding sexuality became intense regarding homosexuality and queer subjects as the moral watchdogs used the fear emotion among the public to manipulate the community and erode sexual rights (Robinson, Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The contradictory 54).
Thus, the widespread belief ingrained in the popular imagination is that when an adult violates a child, he is usually a paedophile with either sexual orientation. The child is a victim of the lurid desires of an adult with deviant sexual desires. This anxiety regarding the moral deprivation of children has affected childhood and early education regarding sex and sexual behaviour. The widespread panic results in suspicion and panic regarding friends, neighbours, colleagues, and even parents. An example of moral panic was observed in Poland and Australia:
The public panic around Tinky Winky in Poland is an example of the close surveillance of children’s early educational experiences and the use of moral panic to maintain the hegemony of heteronormative values that have become commonplace. Other critical examples of this process occurring in Australia can be seen in the Play School saga (2004), the We’re Here booklet incident (2005) and the Tillman Park Child Care Centre controversy (2006)… Each of these examples is also related to fears that young children’s learning might be transgressing what is generally considered appropriate and ‘normal’ knowledge for minors, thus potentially compromising their childhood innocence. (Robinson, “In the Name of ‘Childhood Innocence’: A Discursive Exploration of the Moral Panic Associated with Childhood and Sexuality” 118)
The morality of childhood innocence, parental rights, and childhood rights have become a tool for politicians and conservative individuals to create a hegemonic dominance over the debate over the inclusion of sex education in children’s education. Often, groups that are fighting for child right and preservation of childhood innocence fight to push their agenda to stop sex education, as they believe this would corrupt the innocent children. Right-wing discourse about child innocence is usually associated with the public debate on appropriate practice during the developmental age.
Clearly, childhood innocence and fear of child sexuality is the tool to arouse moral panic among the public. The aim of such discourse is to reinstate the fear of abuse of perceived childhood, a girl child, and a child-adult relationship. The fear usually consists of the subjectivity of young children to an adult with dangerously perverse taste and affiliation.
Childhood Innocence
What is, therefore, the concept of childhood innocence? Child innocence, many believe, has become a part of a popular discourse tool of the conservatives to gain hegemonic control over the popular imagination and moral mania of the masses (Baird 292). The politics with child sexuality and innocence is “neither neutral nor benign” and therefore is termed as “child fundamentalism” by Baird (292). Fundamentalism is defined as “a style of thought in which certain principles are recognized as essential ‘truths’ that have unchallengeable and overriding authority, regardless of their content” (Baird 293). In this context, the child becomes a symbol of innocence and acts as a human shield. The images of childhood that are portrayed in the mass media are ideally those that have become a part of images associated with childhood such as pig-tails or sailor coat dress.
Thus, the images have become unchallenged and fundamental in their portrayal. The images presented in these mass discourses of childhood hold on to the past image of an untainted, unadulterated childhood that is entrenched in the popular imagination. The mass media portrayal of childhood simply reinstates the innocent child in the present and promises a future of reinvigorated innocence. The child fundamentalism is refuted when one disassociates and challenges the utopian innocence embodied in a child and hence, creates a way to allow “all that it disallows” (Baird 297). Thus arises the question of secrecy in child education from everything sexual.
Sexuality is natural. It is not deviance from the “normal”. Once we accept that fact, it will be easier to educate the children, breaking the myth of childhood innocence. According to Freud, children are born with their innate desire for sexual gratification, and a child as a toddler gratifies his/her sexual needs through different parts of the body. Freud points out that the more we succumb to secrecy, the more successfully we burn the light of curiosity among children:
What is really important is that children should never get the idea that one wants to more of a secret of the facts of sexual life … and to ensure this it is necessary that from the very first what has to do with sexuality should be treated like anything else that is worth knowing about. (Freud 138)
Child innocence is a utopian concept that has been used as a medium of discourse to gain control over the fear that has been categorically infused in the popular imagination. The hegemonic control of the child body and sexuality has become a political tool to repress the natural development of a child. The brand of “innocence” is just another means to the subjugation of right-wing political ideology.
Works Cited
Baird, Barbara. “Child Politics, Feminist Analyses.” Australian Feminist Studies 23.57 (2008): 291-305. Print.
Foucault, MIchel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. “Sexual enlightenment of children (An open letter to Dr. M. Furst).” Strachey, James. The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: The Hogarth Press, 1959. 129-139. Print.
Robinson, Kerry H. “In the Name of ‘Childhood Innocence’ : A Discursive Exploration of the Moral Panic Associated with Childhood and Sexuality.” Cultural Studies Review 14.2 (2008): 113-129. Print.
Robinson, Kerry H. Innocence, Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The contradictory. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.