Het verlaten van de kindertijd. Seksualiteit en hoe de kinderen pubers Worden

Samenvatting

The End of Childhood, the Onset of Adolescence. Describes how a group of 30 Dutch children, ages 11-12, from a high-middle-class-urban background deal with the theme of sexuality. This theme was omnipresent. I present three portraits of children who managed the subject differently. By looking closely at the reactions they evoked in their classmates, I am able to show that all children were very much concerned with the onset of adolescence. Whereas some of them classified themselves already as adolescents, others preferred to stay children and not to think about what was ahead of them, and yet another group liked to dream about what they thought of as their future. Adults like to think of the age group under study as innocent children to whom sexuality is still quite irrelevant. However, these young children grow up in an urban environment, where one finds sexuality in many different forms very much present on practically every street corner. They have easy access to teen magazines, and other media (movies, TV, Internet). Amidst all this information and warnings and explanations from adults, the children try to find and define their own ways, and they do so in dialogue with their peers. 1 Figure, 13 References. Adapted from the source document.