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From pederasty to pedophilia: Sex between children or youth and adults in U.S. history
Author(s) -
Cleves Rachel Hope
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/hic3.12435
Subject(s) - pedophilia , moral panic , human sexuality , psychology , history of childhood , psychosexual development , rhetoric , historiography , developmental psychology , gender studies , sexual abuse , history , sociology , criminology , poison control , suicide prevention , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , environmental health , archaeology
The history of sexual relations between children or youth and adults in the United States has received limited attention in part because of the strong taboos against discussion of the topic. The growing moral panic about pedophilia in the 1980s, which coincided with the first wave of American historiography of sexuality, had a silencing effect. Historians of the family first broke the silence by researching the history of incest within the family, focusing on father–daughter relations. Later, in the 1990s, historians of childhood argued that age should be considered as a category of analysis within the history of sexuality. Many scholars have explored the role that age played in structuring same‐sex male encounters, especially at the turn of the twentieth century. Others working in a range of disciplines have historicized the rhetoric of the “sexual psychopath” or the “pedophile,” and its effects. Much work remains to be done on multiple aspects of this topic.