Towards a central theory of childhood sexuality: a relational approach: A Relational Approach

Noting that much of the writing on sexuality since the 1970s has been done from a social constructionist approach, this chapter acknowledges the impact of social constructivism while pointing to the tools available for moving beyond it in our thinking about children’s relationships to a twenty-first century sexual world. The author draws from the “figurational and relational” sociology of Norbert Elias to argue for an interdisciplinary approach to theorizing children’s sexuality. The author argues for the usefulness of Elias’s theories in understanding at the micro level the lived sexualities of children and young people, as well as at the macro level state legislation, policy, and dominant constructions about children and their relationship to sexuality.