ABSTRACT
Taking child sexual abuse as its key frame, this chapter explores a range of textual representations that elucidate ambiguities surrounding the special status accorded childhood within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). These ambiguities include apparent contradictions around the significance accorded gender, the ways childhood functions culturally as an icon of the true self (and even the lost self), and with the ‘natural’ qualities associated with childhood giving rise to some key tensions in practice. The analysis is used to help explain claims for the contemporary crisis around childhood, and with this it becomes possible to move beyond both the unhelpful status of childhood as originary state demanding restoration and overgeneralised developmental claims, to instead focus on what particular children in particular contexts need now.
