
The History of Child Abuse (1998) - exolymph
http://psychohistory.com/articles/the-history-of-child-abuse/
======
Dahoon
This from the article:

>A childhood more or less free from adult sexual use is in fact a very late
historical achievement, limited to a few fortunate children in a few modern
nations.

Clashes with this:

>In America, the most accurate scientific studies, based on lengthy
interviews, report that 30 percent of men and 40 percent of women remember
having been sexually molested during childhood—defining “molestation” as
actual genital contact, not just exposure.

30-40 procent isn't "more or less free from adult sexual use" in my opinion.
The numbers looks genuine from a quick search but I hope they are not.
Otherwise something is very wrong.

>Adjusting statistically for what is known about these additional factors, I
have concluded that the real sexual abuse rate for America is 60 percent for
girls and 45 percent for boys, about half of these directly incestuous.

:|

~~~
dredmorbius
The context here, clear from the previous sentence's mention of _incest taboo_
as another recent development, is that this is referencing _normative
expectation_ , as contrasted with actual experience.

That is, in earlier times, not only would the experience have been far more
widespread, and likely more frequent in individual cases, _but considered
perfectly normal, non-deviant, and lawful_. At least if you accept the
author's argument (I'm undecided as yet).

But the notion that attitudes toward sexual relations with (or between) minor
can change markedly over time is abundantly clear. Within recent memory, the
age of legal marriage has been as low as 14 (considered "childhood") in
certain US states. New York State raised the minimum from 14 to 18 in 2017:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-ends-child-marriage-
ra...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-ends-child-marriage-raising-age-
of-consent-from-14-to-18/)

The same article notes that two states, North Carolina and Alaska have a
specified minimum age of 14, _and 27 states lack any specific minimum age._

I'm not arguing that the low (or no) minimum age laws are right. I am pointing
out that standards, and laws, within the US, and within the past few years,
have included marriage, and presumably sexual relations, among minors. Along
with (and combined with) attitudes toward race and religion (anti-
miscegenation laws also being within living memory in the US, overturned in
1967 in _Loving v. Virginia_
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia)),
little else among human norms has changed _more_.

