Activity

I once heard an historian being interviewed about the topic of childhood. (Can’t remember his name, sorry). He said something like: the idea of a distinct phase of life called childhood is a relatively recent phenomenon and that if you look at art works and the like through the ages, children are shown dressed as adults (just smaller sized clothes) and in social contexts the same as adults. He also mentioned literature not separating out children and childhood as a specific phase. And you are right, in most traditional cultures, as soon as a person was physically mature enough to reproduce, he or she goes through some kind of initiation or admittance to society and a marriage happens.
So now in the more modern world, we have a specific stage of life called childhood, which is protected and celebrated by adults. We believe this is right and moral and that children should be shielded from “harsh” realities, including sex in general and paedophilia in specific.
I once attended a short lecture where they talked about the fact that sexual assault (including rape, etc.) is usually about power and denigrating in some way the victim. It’s context is usually that the victim cannot refuse – due to cultural expectation, emotional / pshychological manipulation or threat of or actual use of physical violence. In this definition, where the adult has power and the child does not, paedophilia is clearly assault and causes much trauma. But there is this long running history of its presence…. so human society includes trauma inflicted on children from the very start?
It is all very contradictory and complicated.