Youth, sexuality and sexual citizenship: an introduction

In popular scientific and policy discourse ideas about childhood and youth tend to elicit two rather contradictory responses. On the one hand, children and young people may be seen as the nation and a family’s future, full of promise and good things to come. Their creativity, vibrancy and youthfulness are to be valued, holding the potential both to rejuvenate the present and to lead to a better future. In political discourses as diverse as fascism (Kater 2004), social reformism (France 2007) and communism (Gorsuch 2000, Yang 2016), children and young people are afforded special status as adults-in-waiting and future citizens. On the other hand, there is a darker side to childhood and youth. Children in general, and ‘adolescents’ in particular, are often construed as willful, irresponsible and feckless – in need of adult tutelage, discipline and control. In the absence of guidance and restraint, things can go wrong – children may cease to apply themselves to study, young people can go off the rails and adolescents in particular may turn delinquent. It is the tension between these competing ideologies – the good and the bad, the hopeful and the more pessimistic – that makes it so difficult to take a balanced view of young people and their future.