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

Party system institutionalisation in east-central Europe: empirical dimensions and tentative conclusions

The nationalisation of party systems is a topic closely related to processes of party system institutionalisation, an area that has developed its own literature and dimensions of analysis. Institutionalisation is understood to comprise four main dimensions: the growth of stability in the rules and nature of inter-party competition, the development of stable roots in society that help ensure a measure of regularity in how people vote, the acquisition of legitimacy by parties and the electoral process, and the establishment of party organisation that have an independent status and some value in their own right. The idea of party system institutionalisation was first presented by S. Mainwaring and T. Scully in 1995 and has been developed in a range of other publications, mostly by Mainwaring with a number of different contributors. It was first developed in a Latin American context but has an obvious relevance to developments in other newly democratising countries. In terms of outcomes, party system institutionalisation is understood to have a strong impact on the quality of democracy and to reduce tendencies to clientelism, political populism and the growth of anti-politics sentiments, and to foster mechanisms of democratic accountability and effective policy formulation. Over the years, a substantial literature on the process of party system institutionalisation has been produced and, in recent years, a growing proportion of this has concerned systems in Central and Eastern Europe. This paper will, firstly, survey and evaluate some of the most recent literature with a view to establishing what light it sheds on the process in East-Central Europe and, secondly, identify and assess the key data that enable any judgement to be made on the course of this process in the region and to identify the contributions in this area of various data-bases relating to party politics

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

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

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