ABSTRACT
Moral panics concerning “childhood innocence”, “family breakdown”, loss of “traditional values” and the costs of “promiscuity” (Corteen and Scraton, 1997) are consistently promoted by politicians and media commentators. Reactionary headlines fuel public outrage, demanding political responses to untypical but highly publicised and emotive accounts of young people’s active sexuality. These include pre-teen and teenage pregnancies, access to contraception and “irresponsible” young fathers. Simultaneously, popular discourses emphasise children’s vulnerability, and the need to protect their assumed innocence, via highly charged campaigns targeting suspected sex offenders. It is in this context that sex education policy has developed.
