Questionable motives?
Sarah Lawrence
To unite the most diverse and argumentative group of parents, you need only mention the issue of the legal status of children, as I did recently on the Internet. For greatest effect, say that you believe that the age-of-consent laws harm children. As one correspondent pointed out, I succeeded in creating a 'miracle': all the usual disputants were united in their opposition to my 'execrable' views. Some of them questioned my motives and made odious insinuations, implying that since some paedophiles campaign ostensibly for children's rights, anyone who cares about children's rights must be a paedophile. When one party in a discussion starts defaming his opponent, one cannot help wondering whether he has any arguments at all.
Ironically, most of those people have a view of children which in a key way resembles that of the very paedophiles they abominate. That is, they have a preconceived vision of how they want a child to behave, and they want to channel the child into that vision using various levels of pressure and, if necessary, force. And they want the law to sanction this. It is quite alien to those critics, just as it is to people who sexually assault children, to start by looking at what the individual child wants, and who he is, and trying to find ways of helping him do what he wants to do. It is not surprising that these two opposing groups share that view, for it is of course the standard view in our society. It is taken for granted that the role and function of the adult in an adult-child relationship is to *control the child*.
think that any intimate relationship that is based on control rather than consent is both immoral and likely to fail. But this immediately raises the issue (rather topical at the moment), to what extent should parents seek to control their children's sexuality? Should they control it at all? We must give our children the best advice we can, the best information, protection, and moral guidance both by word and by example. But should we really *control* something so personal? If a person's sexuality is not his own, what is? Punishing children, or making them feel dirty, on account of 'playing doctors and nurses', or masturbating, or engaging in any consenting sexual activity whatsoever, is a form of sexual assault (cf. the actions of the 'caring professionals' mentioned in TCS Opinion ("Beware: child-protectors at work", p. 4, Taking Children Seriously, issue12)).
must admit that the paedophiles on the Internet would eagerly agree with this particular children's right. "If consent is the criterion," they would say, "why should we not be allowed to have sex with children, provided that they consent?" We seem to be in the awkward situation that a child's right to engage in consenting sex is, by inexorable logic, equivalent to a paedophile's right to have sex with a consenting child. Many people would grudgingly grant the former, but never the latter. Antipathy to the idea of paederasty tends forestall all thought about the issues. However, rather than simply vilifying paederasts as being evil by definition, I should like to consider the matter rationally, from the point of view of childrenšs welfare and rights. Might paederasty, in some cases, be consistent with real concern for childrenšs welfare?
think that the single most important fact bearing on this issue is this: in any close relationship between an adult and a child, a gross imbalance of power is unavoidable. And generally, having power over someone is morally incompatible with having a sexual relationship with that person. Vladimir Nabokov's book, Lolita, gives a good illustration of this.
The paedophile in Lolita was quite coercive and became more so when the girl began to have boyfriends of her own age. But even if the adult tries hard to use his power non-coercively, if he is a significant person in the child's life it is nevertheless he who has all the power in the relationship. However benevolent and sensitive he may be, however much he respects the child's rights, it is still predominantly his ideas, his decisions and his personality that shape the child's options, rather than vice-versa.
In addition to the issue of power, there is the related one of the adultšs duty to protect the child. As many TCS readers will know, protecting onešs children from coercion is, in our society, a daily struggle, not just against active interference, but against sheer bother, unpleasantness and acute embarrassment when one is forced to disregard social convention, violate cherished taboos and collide with authority ("Yes, Mum, I did tell her that you were lying when you told her about Santa Claus. No, doctor, I will not make him swallow it. No, Mr Jones, they do not go to school."). All this is taxing and bruising enough as it is, for any adult who is serious about protecting a child. Any sexual relationship that existed between the adult and the child would greatly multiply all such problems.
Power imbalances can and do happen in adult sexual relationships too, though they are seldom in the same league as that between a child and a significant adult. But my point is that a child needs many things from such an adult - stability, trust, un-demanding approval and interest - which, in our society at least, sexual relationships frequently put at risk. Certainly sexual relationships are much worse at providing these things than, say, ordinary friendships between adults, or conventional parent-child relationships. And yet, we want to do better than the conventional parent-child relationship. We want to provide even more in the way of security and commitment, and demand even less in return.
paedophile on the Internet argued that most people in this world are caring, decent individuals, able to overcome power imbalances with those they care about. He claimed that in a truly loving relationship, the child would benefit and not be harmed. But that argument is not convincing. If we were to accept love as a guarantee that children will not be harmed by the adults who have power over them, we might as well forget about campaigning for non-coercive child rearing and children's rights.
Only a tiny minority of children are not loved. The rest are hurt and harmed by those who love them. Overcoming the imbalance of power between adults and children is not easy; love alone will not begin to do it; it is not something that anyone in our society can claim to do well. I have already mentioned how incompatible it is with the child-centred approach that I advocate, to have a "preconceived vision of how one wants a child to behave". When such a vision has a sexual component, how can it fail to make matters worse?
If an adult nevertheless seeks a sexual relationship, we must ask, to what end? What sort of relationship can he be hoping for? Would it be like a marriage - demanding exclusivity and fidelity, and often breaking down acrimoniously within a few years? Since the reality is that the child is powerless in the relationship, what kind of relationship would it be? What if the child wanted to end the sexual side? Would the adult simply revert to providing the loving intimacy that the child wants and needs, dropping the sexual overtones? Is that how adults normally behave when sexual relationships between them break down? Of course not. It is just not credible. And if children in such situations did not find it credible either, then there would inevitably be immense pressure on them not to reveal their dissatisfaction, and so they would be trapped in situations of extreme sexual exploitation.
As I have said, an adult who genuinely loves a child and cares about childrenšs rights already has enough trouble protecting the child in a thousand different ways. One must suspect that, whatever they may think, paedophiles involved in 'loving sexual relationships' with children are not motivated by an overriding concern for the welfare of their young lovers. The paedophilešs belief that he could have a love affair with a child can be no more than a romantic vision. At best, it may be a gentle sort of vision, as visions go. Nevertheless it is an impossible vision. And when it failed, as it almost invariably does for adults, the child would, to put it mildly, suffer.
But does it follow that there should be an age of consent? This idea is so rarely questioned that one may be forgiven for ascribing to it more wisdom than it deserves. One situation I have not so far considered is that where child seeks to further his own sexual development. This situation is quite different from that discussed above. For example, suppose an adolescent goes to a bar hoping to lose his or her virginity there. In that case there is no parental or quasi-parental relationship to be damaged, so it is much less likely that an adult who obliges could be doing any harm. So let's shed our comforting assumptions for a moment and consider the possible harm in having an age of consent.
That sexuality might develop suddenly, conveniently coinciding with the sixteenth birthday, is about as likely as the sudden development of language. Were there no age of consent, sexual development would be able to follow a more natural, incremental course, just as children develop language incrementally. The effect of the current law is to sabotage this natural evolution of sexuality. In effect, those below the age of consent are heavily pressured to pretend that they have no sexual feelings; they are assumed not to have a sexual side to their personality at all; they are not even allowed to watch films that include depiction of sex. Those above the magic age are under a different kind of pressure, to participate in the conventional sexual patterns, to prove that they are attractive women, or that they are "real" men - all this in preparation for a marital relationship.
The complete denial of children's sexuality must cause guilt and confusion in those children who are aware of sexual feelings within themselves, and is surely at least partly responsible for the preponderance of twisted, guilt-ridden, dysfunctional sexuality apparent in the adult population. It must also be to blame for many teenage pregnancies, because guilt and fear prevents many under-age individuals from seeking contraceptive advice. Similarly, it makes young people less likely to take precautions against AIDS and other diseases.
The law intended to protect children from abusive paedophiles concomitantly prohibits loving sex between just-under-age peers. But isn't this harm outweighed by the good the law does in protecting children from ill-intentioned paedophiles? On the contrary, age of consent laws may even lead to more exploitation than there would be otherwise. How?
For example, frustration resulting from being forbidden sexual contact with individuals their own age may lead some children to tolerate or even seek sexual intimacy with adults, which then becomes unwelcome sex which they find it hard to rebuff. Other children, knowing that under-age sex is illegal, mistakenly blame themselves. The entire legal framework that accords children a lower status than that of adults, dis-empowers and de-humanises them in such a way that they are psychologically, as well as legally, unable to stand up to adults. All their young lives, they receive the message that they must obey adults; they are powerless against adults; they have little control over their own lives. It is extremely difficult to stand up to those in whom the law vests such power.
Large imbalances of power, such as that of adults over children, make it easy for the powerful to coerce the powerless in a thousand ways, from the most overt to the most subtle. Slaves were commonly raped by their masters. Yet even where this was illegal, the slaves could do little about it. The cure - the only effective cure and the only morally justifiable one - was not harsher penalties for "miscegenation"; it was to free the slaves: to give them equal rights.
Generally, were children accustomed to being in control of their own lives, they would be far more likely to complain about any ill-treatment they received. In particular, in the absence of age-of-consent laws, there would be less cause for children to feel frustration and guilt, and it would be psychologically easier for them to defend themselves from sexual assaults. There would also be a legal framework that was devoted to giving practical effect to their consent and their wishes. I have written more about this in the article, "Thoughts on the legal status of children" (*Taking Children Seriously*, page 9, issue 12).
Let me leave you with another disturbing thought: since children are used to being coerced by adults, is it inconceivable that they might be attracted to adults who are nice to them? How many children therefore become sexually involved with adults simply because they seem to treat them with respect, in a way that other adults in their lives don't? And would this happen if children were not so used to being controlled and disregarded?
Copyright (c) 1994, Sarah Lawrence
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