title: Making sense of children's sexual behavior in child care: An analysis of adult responses in special investigation reports.
abstract: This paper investigates how adults respond to sexual behavior among children in child care. Culturally, childhood sexuality is variously understood as natural curiosity, a sign of sexual abuse, or a symptom of a sex-offender in the making. Given these competing cultural meanings, how are sexual-like behaviors by children managed by the adults who care for them? An analysis of qualitative data from Special Investigation Reports by childcare licensing consultants in the state of Michigan is used to examine how parents, child care providers, and child care licensing consultants manage and respond to sexual behavior between children in the context of child care. How sexual behavior is responded to depends primarily on who is doing the responding - parent, childcare provider, or state licensing consultant - rather than what type of behavior is being responded to. Parents respond to a wide range of behaviors between children as if they are incidents of sexual abuse. Childcare providers respond to many of those same incidents as misbehavior. Licensing consultants understand these incidents as violation of rules of supervision, but they were also the only group to ever ask if children's sexual behavior was potentially a sign of a child having been sexually abused in another setting. Providers and parents need more education about what kinds of sexual behavior to be concerned about and what kind to understand as common. More education that sexuality that is "rare" and persistent could be a sign of sexual abuse is needed by all parties.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382, USA.
authors.forename: Karin A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Martin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D002654:Child Care; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008824:Michigan; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Child care; Childhood sexuality; Preschool; Qualitative analysis; Sexual abuse