Are Children Sexual? Who, What, Where, When, and How?

Both within academia and outside of it, acknowledgement of children’s sexual desires and behaviors are rare. When these acknowledgements do occur, they are often caught up in ideas about protection, regulation, and childhood innocence. The authors disrupt these ideas by drawing attention to the fact that children are sexual in almost every way that adults are sexual and that sexuality is an important part of children’s emotional lives. The authors explore theories of childhood sexuality, review the literature on the topic, and discuss how the form of children’s sexuality is shaped by their external worlds. The authors disentangle the notion of children’s vulnerability from that of sexual innocence as they explore how, and to what extent, children are sexual beings.