Trust, Risk and Framing Contemporary Childhood

Abstract

Panics about the risks faced by children are nothing new. A wealth of literature testifies to a long British tradition of problematizing the status and condition of childhood — with news media, politicians, police and other key definers repeatedly voicing (or consciously whipping up) deep-seated societal neuroses about juvenile vulnerability. Threats, we are continually reminded, come in any number of forms: everything from mundane household objects (Hood et al., 1996; Kelley et al., 1997), to injury and sickness (Hier, 2003, 2008) to drug treatments specifically designed to protect children from ill health (Mason & Donnelly, 2000; Evans et al., 2001; Ramsay et al., 2002; Boyce, 2007) can present potential dangers to the wellbeing of the young. All the while, kids are continually at risk of being preyed upon by an omnipresent rogues’ gallery of malevolent deviants. Among the most feared ‘folk-devils’ (Cohen, 1972) is a baleful figure straight out of the Brothers Grimm: the predatory paedophile who threatens to poach unsuspecting innocents as they play, walk to school or pop around the corner to visit friends (Fritz & Altheide, 1987; Best, 1990; Jenkins, 1992; McNeish & Roberts, 1995; Valentine, 1996a, 1996b, 1997a, 1997b; Valentine & McKendrick, 1997; Gentry, 1988; Scott et al, 1998; Kitzinger, 1999; Gallagher et al., 2002; Meyer, 2007).