Wellesley Centers for Women 

Wellesley Centers for Women

Wellesley Centers for Women

Commentary: Putting Children First -“Innocence” in Childhood & the Risk for Child Commercial Sexual Exp...

• Kate Price

Research & Action Report, Fall/Winter 2012

By Kate Price, M.A.

As a society, we often seem to care more about protecting our cultural ideal of childhood innocence than about meeting the actual needs of real-life children—especially commercially sexually exploited children. To fit the ideal of purity, children require high levels of social capital—preferably, they’re white, middle or upper class, and heterosexual. They have limited or no sexual experience, enjoy secure health care, housing, and education, and they live within a supportive nuclear family. In my experience, children living without access to such resources are too often labeled “bad kids” and blamed for “choosing” to exist outside of this ideal.