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Children and sexuality in early modern England
| This paper explores the issue of how children were thought about in relation to sexual practice, knowledge and experience in early modern England. Since Ariès’ Centuries of Childhood, there has been very little discussion of childhood sexuality in the early modern period. Children and sex in other periods are discussed usually in the context of involuntary sexual activity such as child abuse and incest. But was there a concept of child sexual abuse in this earlier period, and linked to this any recognition or understanding that there may have been some adults who had a preference for sexual activity with children? This issue is especially pertinent when examining a society where there was a dislocation between the legal age of marriage (and therefore consent); the age at which marriages generally actually occurred and the age at which children were thought to reach physical sexual maturity (puberty). The legal age of marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys (though the age of consent was lowered to 10 for girls in 1576) while the average age of marriage was much higher, the mid to late twenties. Puberty, or the age at which girls were thought to achieve sexual maturity through the onset of menstruation and hence the ability to conceive, was also thought to occur at a later age than the age of consent: around the age of 14 or 15, but could be much higher, even as late as 19. However, marriages of children before they had reached puberty, and of older men to young girls, did take place, albeit infrequently, and usually between elite families. One of the main aims of marriage was procreation; so how did early modern people view these marriages and what were their attitudes towards the consummation of marriage in these cases? Through the analysis of a variety of sources from court records to medical books and pornography I will attempt to uncover some early modern attitudes towards sexual activity, in and out of marriage, both between children and young adolescents themselves, and between the young and the mature.
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