Continued public outcries over such issues as the presence of young models in sexually suggestive ads and occurrences of intimate relationships between teachers and students speak to one of the most controversial fears of our time: the entanglement of children and sexuality. In this book, Steven Angelides confronts that very fear, arguing that adult alarm over child sexualization often masks the sexuality of children.

Angelides explores how emotional vocabularies of anxiety, shame, and even contempt not only dominate discussions of youth sexuality but also allow adults to avoid acknowledging the sexual agency of young people. Introducing case studies and trends from Australia, the United Kingdom, and North America, he challenges prevalent assumptions toward a variety of topics, among them sex education, age-of-consent laws, and technology-driven phenomena like sexting. Along the way, Angelides contends that an unwillingness to recognize the sexual agency that children possess results less in the protection of young people than in their marginalization.