ABSTRACT
Public discourses revolving around issues of child abuse are currently among the most common topics analyzed by scholars using a moral panic framework. Besides scholars’ own interests in these two issues, the regularity with which they are chosen as research topics reflects the increasing attention paid by media and politicians to substantial structural changes in the West regarding family models, parental roles, sexual identities, perceptions of childhood, recognition of children’s rights and status, gender relations, and women’s rights. Moral panics triggered by public discourses regarding children’s well-being have often expanded to encompass multidimensional transformations in axiological systems, encompassing changing demographic trends on a global scale, increasing individualism, and conservative and progressive political ideologies.
