Ethical review and reflexivity in research of children's sexuality

Abstract

Research in the area of children's sexuality is largely based on observational and retrospective studies. Childhood studies literature increasingly calls upon the inclusion of children's voices, yet with sensitive topics ethical positions often close research possibilities in the territories of children's worlds. Children are perceived as a vulnerable group, especially when the investigation focuses on their sexual development and activity – and it is perceived that this research area is too sensitive and potentially harmful to children. Within the context of beginning a qualitative study on children's sexuality in New Zealand (including interviews with children), this paper reviews a number of studies of childhood research. These studies provide a glimpse at how research focusing on children has been conducted, and explores ethical issues arising in such research. The significance of researcher reflexivity is acknowledged for ethical research practice. The paper concludes that in research on children's sexuality a process of ethical review is limited, and that researcher competence in sensitive investigations is required. Among other difficulties for this researcher (with a professional background in child and family therapy) is the vulnerability of being a man choosing to research children.

Keywords:

• child sexuality
• research ethics
• reflexivity
• sensitive topics

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges comments from Pat Sikes and Martin Tolich on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

^1. Why on earth are you researching children's sexuality? Where does that come from? Questions like these are asked of me often with a tone of suspicion about my motives and intentions. Other researchers have also had questions like these asked of them (see Sikes 2010). This area of study comes from clinical practice as a family therapist, in which many families were referred because of a child's ‘sexual behaviour’, usually with other children. The therapy work with sexuality ‘issues’ for children and young people sometimes responded to a child's actions that were abusive. However, I became increasingly concerned about reactive abuse by adults: the parents, teachers, therapists (counsellors, social workers and psychologists) who judged, labelled, disciplined and totalised these children with identities and stories of limitation. These children were aged 8–12 years, and were often ascribed adult identities of ‘toucher’, ‘sex offender’, and ‘molester’, limiting their social relationships and embodied lives.