The notion of innocence refers to children’s simplicity, their lack of knowledge, and their purity not yet spoiled by mundane affairs. Such innocence is taken as the promise of a renewal of the world by the children. Innocence has been attributed to children and childhood by adults at all times, but content and social function of such glorifying assessments show considerable variation over time and context, and the valuation is never unanimous among contemporaries. Innocence used to be a religious notion in earlier times. With the Enlightenment and success of Rousseau’s Émile, nature becomes a new point of reference. From the 19th century onward, the idea of children’s innocence is strongly interrelated with children’s sexuality. Innocence is then emphasized to defend the assumption of an absence of sexuality in children and the demand for such absence. Innocence is not a scientific term; therefore, the numerous studies concerning processes, seminal ideas, and functions of the value assessment of children and childhood do not constitute a unified research area. Researchers deal with questions of children’s innocence often rather implicitly. They do so while analyzing the social construction and reconstruction of childhood at different times and in different historical and contemporary contexts. They do so as well in the interpretation of classic pedagogy, as innocence is a conceptual element in the writings of several pedagogues. Last but not least, we find references to notions of innocence in studies on discourses and political programs concerning children’s sexuality and in the scientific reconstruction of moral enterprises called “moral panics”: public outcries concerning improper childhoods. Put together, these studies, which are scattered over multiple research fields, support the following conclusions: (1) various value assessments of children and childhood may be found at all times, and the notion of innocence is never uncontested; (2) historical notions of innocence are complex and may as well recognize children’s agency; (3) the attribution of innocence to children is often functionalized by interest groups to support their claims and to devaluate rival or marginal groups; it may therefore be a value assessment of minor profit for the children, but of high profit for interest groups; (4) while the attribution of innocence has had a clear reference to religion and nature implicating far-reaching assumptions concerning humankind, it is almost completely narrowed down to debates on children’s sexuality and sexual endangerment in the early 21st century.
Responsibilities, tensions and ways forward: parents’ perspectives on children’s sexuality education
