childhood sexuality

I don't know how I missed this item posted on the Advocates for Youth web site last week:

I don't tap into the mainstream media news broadcasts often, but I was in the pizza place last evening and caught a story about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and something about sex ed for kindergartners, so of course I had to pay attention! Here's an ABC News link about the story.

I wonder how many 5-year-olds Mitt Romney has spent much time talking to. Yesterday Mitt Romney attacked Barack Obama, who supports age-appropriate sex ed for all school kids, including kindergartners, saying that it was never age appropriate to talk about sex to 5 year olds.

The New York Times reports today on research that demonstrates a very high correlation between use of child pornography and the actual molesting of children. The Times did a good job of reporting why it is so important to be cautious about interpreting a study like this one. And it also does a good job of reporting on the need for continued research on child molestation.

Because of the tremendous moral panic risks that are attached to publishing anything about htis kind of research I am going to focus entirely on the cautions. There will be lots of voices out there focusing on the tentative conclusions of the study itself, so here lets just focus on the limitations:

1. Remember when thinking about these results that they were produced using only already-incarcerated men convicted of child pornography charges. These men may well not be representative of all people who have ever downloaded or viewed child pornography.