Making molehills into mountains: Adult responses to child sexuality and behaviour

Sexual behaviour among children can be perplexing for adults as they negotiate a spectrum of ideas relating to abuse and natural curiosity. In the search for understandings, adults can act in ways that close opportunities for children to explore and describe meanings for the behaviour. This article invites practitioners to check their assumptions in this kind of work, and to take a stance that opposes abusive actions – while taking up a position of enquiry to support the multiple stories that make up children’s lives

Ethical beginnings: Reflexive questioning in designing child sexuality research

Counselling young children referred for sexualised behaviour can challenge therapists’ ideas about childhood and sexuality. This area of practice is complex and sensitive, and calls upon collaboration with a range of significant adults in children's lives. Purpose: This paper examines a researcher's process of movement from counselling practice into qualitative research practice, and the use of reflexive questioning to explore ethical issues within the study. Design: Shaped by social constructionist ideas and discourse theory, ethical questions are outlined within the design stage of a doctoral research project on sexuality in children's lives in Aotearoa New Zealand. Limitations: This paper explores ethics in the design of a current study: there are no results or conclusions

Play, prey or “sexploration”? Understanding and responding to sexual actions by children at primary school

Schools and teachers are expected to respond appropriately when they encounter children acting sexually. This article describes the literature on child sexual development and behaviour and the responses of Waikato primary school principals to a questionnaire. Specific issues for New Zealand primary schools and teachers are investigated, with suggestions for child educators to develop relational and collaborative approaches to support children and families

Meaning and social reality of sexuality in the lives of children in Aotearoa New Zealand

How sexuality in pre-pubescent childhood is spoken about varies enormously within societies: almost swinging like a pendulum between perspectives of healthy and normal exploration, to panic of children being victims of abuse and ideas of sexualisation by the media (Egan and Hawkes 2008; Jackson 1982, 1990; Postman 1994). Reflecting initially from my practice as a family counsellor, and more recently as a counsellor educator and researcher, this chapter explores multiple discourses in children’s lives on the meaning and social reality of sexuality. The aim is to question and deconstruct concepts that have shaped discourse of childhood and sexuality, and which is currently a binary position of children who are safe (i.e. asexual or un-sexual) or not (sexualised) (see, for example, Postman 1994). The intention behind this questioning of constructions is not to deny this dominant discourse, but to expose the presence of multiple discourses, and multiple meanings for children’s words and actions. Put simply: children’s sexual actions are frequently ascribed adult notions of sexuality, or taken to mean that maltreatment has occurred. My argument here from counselling practice and research is that sexual actions by children do not necessarily mean some harm has occurred, but that adults’ understandings and responses are informed by discourses that guide them to assume the worst. This can have effects for children’s identities, through disruption of their relationships within family, in addition to experiences of isolation and exclusion within school, neighbourhood and friendship contexts

Ethical review and reflexivity in research of children's sexuality

Research in the area of children's sexuality is largely based on observational and retrospective studies. Childhood studies literature increasingly calls upon the inclusion of children's voices, yet with sensitive topics ethical positions often close research possibilities in the territories of children's worlds. Children are perceived as a vulnerable group, especially when the investigation focuses on their sexual development and activity – and it is perceived that this research area is too sensitive and potentially harmful to children. Within the context of beginning a qualitative study on children's sexuality in New Zealand (including interviews with children), this paper reviews a number of studies of childhood research. These studies provide a glimpse at how research focusing on children has been conducted, and explores ethical issues arising in such research. The significance of researcher reflexivity is acknowledged for ethical research practice. The paper concludes that in research on children's sexuality a process of ethical review is limited, and that researcher competence in sensitive investigations is required. Among other difficulties for this researcher (with a professional background in child and family therapy) is the vulnerability of being a man choosing to research children

Papua New Guinea’s vanishing LNG export boom

Papua New Guinea (PNG) must adjust to lower liquefied natural gas (LNG) and oil prices to avoid a crisis. The PNG LNG project is still extremely important for the country, but because of lower prices many of the benefits of the production phase of the project have vanished – probably for at least a decade. Adjustments are urgently required in fiscal, monetary and foreign exchange policies to adapt to the changed realities. KEY POINTS World oil prices are now more than 35 per cent lower than at the time of the 2015 budget. This will have a direct impact on LNG revenues, since LNG prices are directly linked to oil prices. The fall in LNG and oil prices will reduce government revenue by over K1.4 billion in 2015 – more than 10 per cent of all revenue. Revenues in 2016 are now K2.5 billion less than expected at the time of the 2014 budget. PNG’s expected growth rate for 2015 is now 6.9 per cent, still good but far below the budget forecast of 15.5 per cent. Unless the Kina is re-floated and allowed to depreciate, PNG’s international reserves will fall by the end of 2015 to cover just over three months of imports. Reserves would keep falling and be exhausted by early 2017 as the balance of payments would stay in deficit. Without adjustment, PNG’s budget deficit in 2015 will increase to 8.8 per cent. On realistic expenditure assumptions, the deficit will continue rising to well over 10 per cent. The debt to GDP ratio will increase to 75 per cent by 2017 – two and half times the maximum level in the Fiscal Responsibility Act

Making sense of children's sexuality: Understanding sexual development and activity in education contexts.

Most adults find that responding to sexual activity by children and between children is challenging. This is especially so for teachers in early childhood and primary education contexts. One common view is that children should not be sexual or, if they are, that there is something wrong. These concerns are strengthened by popular adult discourses of sexuality and accompanying ideas of sexual privacy. Among discourses of child development sit ideas of childhood innocence and natural curiosity. However, assumptions of abuse arise when children's sexual curiosity extends beyond what is considered appropriate or "normal". This article examines pre-adolescent child sexual development. It scans some of the ideas and practices that shape adults' understandings in the construction of children's sexual identities. These ideas and practices also shape children's knowledges. Adult responses to children's sexual actions often portray children as abused, abusive or deviant. Using a social constructionist lens, this paper offers educators an exploration of a range of understandings and alternative thinking about sexuality in the worlds of children-yet also critiques ideas of normative behaviour and development. The reader is invited to think about how children can be encouraged to share their subjective meanings and understandings

Adjective Stacking in Northern Sotho

In this paper, I investigate the nature of complex nominal modification in Northern Sotho, a Southern Bantu language and an official language of South Africa. Adjectives in Northern Sotho have traditionally been recognised as a subclass of nouns, based on morphological similarities between nouns and adjectives. Based on recent work which proposes that all languages have a distinct word class ‘adjective’, I argue that adjectives in Northern Sotho constitute an independent grammatical category. I base this suggestion on the common morpho-syntactic behaviour of members of this class and present an in-depth analysis of the ordering of elements in Northern Sotho poly-adjectival nominal phrases. There has been some limited discussion of the theory that there are universal structures in adjective order across different languages, although sequencing in languages with postnominal adjectives is desperately under-researched. Using a combination of corpus data and original fieldwork, I provide support for the suggestion that there are patterns in the syntax of complex modification strings which operate on a universal level, above that of individual languages

Urbanisation: challenges and opportunities for the Australian Aid Program

Between 1990 and 2030, the UN estimates that global population will increase by nearly four billion. Ninety per cent of this increase will be in developing countries, of which ninety per cent will be in urban areas. Such a radical transformation in the way that most of the world's people live will place huge strains on basic services such as water; sanitation and shelter. However; rapid urbanisation creates great potential for economic growth and development. This potential must be managed to minimise the urbanisation of poverty. As the majority of the world's poor will soon live in urban rather than rural areas, Australia's overseas aid program must respond to this shift. Although the primary sources for urban investment will be from the national governments and the private sector, aid can act as an important catalyst in improving urban living standards. The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) facilitates the use of Australian expertise and materials to address these challenges through better urban management