ABSTRACT
How does one write a history of children and sex? The editors of a scholarly collection on the topic subtitled their introductory essay “Here There Be Dragons,” and perhaps no truer words appear in that volume. In the modern western world, the union of children and sex, of childhood and sex, has been perilous ground. 1 Historical actors mapped this territory much as early explorers charted the world, with uncertain knowledge and fearful certainty, while scholars of the topic have, in a variety of ways, found their explorations fraught with danger: to their own deeply held beliefs, to theoretical consistency, to methodological clarity.
