The Sexual Life Of Children

Annotation A study of children's sexual development that begins with the fetus and extends through puberty, with accounts by children of their sexual experiences, behavior, and attitudes.

Going beyond the hype and controversy, Elliott examines how a diverse group of American parents of teenagers understand teen sexuality, showing that, in contrast to the idea that parents are polarized in their beliefs, parents are confused, anxious, and ambivalent about teen sexual activity and how best to guide their own childrens' sexuality.

Linda and Richard Eyre stress that it's never too soon-or too late-to start discussing sex and values with your children, and they've got proven strategies to make it easier. For parents who want to go beyond the birds and the bees talk, How to Talk to Your Child About Sex provides thoughtful, clear, specific guidance on when and, most important, how to help children begin to learn and understand sex, love, and commitment from the most positive viewpoint possible. Preliminary "as needed" talks with three-to eight-year-olds The age eight Big Talk Follow-up talks with eight-to thirteen-year-olds Behavior discussions and guidelines with eleven-to sixteen-year-olds Discussions of perspective and personal standards with fifteen-to nineteen-year-olds

This volume presents a ground-breaking collection of interdisciplinary chapters from international scholars which complicate, and offers new ways to make sense of, children's sexual cultures across complex political, social and cultural terrains.

This courageous and powerful book is a first step in addressing the secrecy, distress, anger, and fear surrounding female sexual abuse of children. Refuting the rationales for our lack of attention to the problem and contradicting some commonly held beliefs about sexual abuse, it combines accounts from survivors with input from professionals working with both survivors and abusers. Part I presents contributions from professionals who discuss aspects of female sexual abuse ranging from impact and treatment issues for victims of childhood sexual abuse by female perpetrators to the paradox of women who sexually abuse children. The second part is devoted to survivors--it presents stories from both men and women, then provides self-help guidelines for both. The book concludes with a valuable section on resources which includes a review of the existing literature on female child molestation as well as a listing of pertinent books and help organizations. FEMALE SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN also addresses the controversial issue of current statistics that show that female sexual abuse is very rare and the question of whether it is being underreported due to fear from survivors that they will not be believed or supported. Regardless of the true magnitude of this problem, secrecy or denial about any aspect of child abuse must be avoided. Whatever future studies may show about this problem, it will not diminish this book's importance in taking the step of exploring this issue.

The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development is a carefully curated conversation that brings together the top researchers in child and adolescent sexual development to redefine the issues, conflicts, and debates in the field. The Handbook is organized around three foundational questions: first, what is sexual development? Second, how do we study sexual development? And third, what roles might adults - including the institutions of the media, family, and education - play in the sexual development of children and adolescents? As the first of its kind, this collection integrates work from sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, education, cultural studies, and allied fields. Writing from different disciplinary traditions and about a range of international contexts, the contributors explore the role of sexuality in children's and adolescents' everyday experiences of identity, family, school, neighborhood, religion, and popular media.

Translated by Derek and Inge Jordan In Children of the Future, Wilhelm Reich shows how disastrous the exclusion of genitality is to the young and its important influence on their development. In his 1932 work The Sexual Rights of Youth, published here in its revised form, Reich speaks in terms of what he sees as the real meaning of the sexual enlightenment of youth: it is not the mystery and dangers of procreation, but the essential nature of sexuality and the right of youth to genital gratification. Reich presents a new way of seeing the parental compulsion to teach. In other chapters, Reich examines attitudes toward infantile masturbation, the source of the human no, and special disturbances of the young. Reichs work is substantiated by his concrete observations and experiences with children, including case studies from the Orgonomic Infant Research Center.