Drawing on the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias, this chapter proposes a ‘central theory’ of childhood sexuality and argues that making sense of childhood sexuality in the 21st century in a way that empowers and enables as well as protects and safeguards children and young people requires a truly interdisciplinary approach. The chapter outlines the defining features of Elias’ figurational or relational sociology and considers its relevance to making sense of childhood sexuality. It argues that as Elias’ notion of figurations can be applied to the relationships and interdependencies of small groups of people as well as the interdependencies between the individual and the State (Quilley & Loyal, 2005) it can provide a framework for understanding the micro level of lived experiences of children and young people with regards to their sexual desires, expressions and identities as well as the macro level of State legislation and policy which are shaped by and, in turn, reinforce dominant constructions of childhood and sexuality.

This book explores how children engage with sex and sexuality. Building on a conceptual and legal grounding in sexuality studies and the new sociology of childhood, the authors debate the age of consent, teenage pregnany, sexual diversity, sexualisation, sex education and sexual literacy, paedophilia, and sex in the digital age. Whilst Moore and Reynolds recognise the necessity of child protection and safeguarding in the context of risk, danger and harm, they also argue that where these stifle children’s sexual knowledge, understanding, expression and experience, they contribute to a climate of fear, ignorance and bad experiences or harms. What is necessary is to balance safeguarding with enabling, and encourage judicious understandings that advance from a rigid developmental model to one that recognises pleasure and excitement in children’s nascent sexual lives. Exploring that balance through their chosen issues, they seek to encourage changed thinking in professional, personal and academic contexts, and speculate that children might teach adults something about the way they think about sex.

This chapter focuses on vampire narratives in children’s films, identifies recurrent themes and critically examines what they tell us about constructions of childhood in the 21st century. It argues that it is possible to identify continuities and discontinuities with earlier children’s stories and traditional fairy tales. On the one hand, as the vast majority of children’s literature is written by adults for children it continues to reflect adult perceptions of who children are and who they should become. In this sense, contemporary vampire narratives perpetuate constructions of childhood predicated on futurity and represent the norms and moral values adults want children to develop in order to become responsible adult citizens of the future. On the other hand, the vampires in these narratives or the child protagonists’ relationships with them open up space in which children can resist adult demands and exercise agency and choice. Rather than being passively moulded and shaped into the adults of the future, these vampire narratives in children’s films allow us to view children, not as ‘members-in-the-making’ but as social actors who co-construct their social worlds.

In September 2015, Gayle Newland became the fourth person to be convicted of 'gender-fraud' since 2012 in the UK. This article offers a critical analysis of the media representation of these four cases and considers the extent to which the defendants are subjected to shaming and humiliation processes and presented as objects of disgust. The significance of media representation of legal cases is that it provides an insight into the ways in which legal discourses are interpreted, reinterpreted and often over simplified by those outside the legal profession. It highlights how legal discourses sit within a network of wider discourses and, therefore, illustrates the intertextuality of the law. Cheung (2014: 301) has suggested that, whilst the role of shame punishments in the criminal justice system has been subject to considerable academic scrutiny, 'social policing by shaming transgressions via the internet' has been under researched. This article will demonstrate that online news stories and the readers' comments that accompany them are important 21st century tools in the shaming and humiliation of those who have transgressed socially constructed gender norms.