Description: How innocent are children? How innocent should they be? What rights do adults have over them? Questions such as these fuel frequent heated debates about contemporary society which take place in the media and elsewhere, yet, these pressing questions are seldomly properly examined or addressed. In this timely and eloquent book, Diana Gittins draws on a fascinating range of psychoanalytic, historical, social, literary, artistic and personal sources to unpack our assumptions about "the child" and "childhood" and explore the meanings and values that are commonly attributed to them. She argues that while there continue to exist substantial differences and inequalities that affect real children in material and, often, harmful ways, "the child" acts as an important cultural construct where multiple and diverse notions of what "the child" is results in confusion and contradiction. These notions underlie the moral panics that regularly recur about adults' abuse of children and children's acts of violence.

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