Providential Understandings of Childhood and Public Policy: The Politics of Generation, Future Adulthood and Moral Regulation of Sexuality in Liberal Democracies

Abstract

This article focuses on the resurgence of regulation of children’s and young people’s sexuality in the UK, Canada and the US despite the efforts, and some success, of feminist and LGBT movements to broaden notions of gender, sexuality and the family. Although different institutional structures and the complexity of the political process are both important factors, this comparative analysis considers the ideational realm and how symbolic ideas shape and are shaped by public policy. While political mobilization of social conservatives is often cited as the cause of this resurgence, when we pay attention to this realm, we can locate a much broader, robust and politically salient foundation for these symbolic ideas in academic concerns of the disciplines and utilitarian concerns of the state. The evidence presented below demonstrates that in all three cases, despite the different political contexts, the enabling political compromise between the various political actors is centred on the protection of children which, in turn, rests on the symbolic ideas of childhood in relation to adulthood (generation), including providential understandings of childhood as an imagined future adulthood based on an ideal of the proper expression of adult sexuality. In understanding these symbolic meanings and paying attention to their use in the legislative process, we can improve our understanding of how regulation of sexuality persists and even intensifies in new ways.