Do children need protecting from adult carers?

How much do child protection policies help prevent abuse - and how much do they damage adults’ ability to conduct normal, caring relationships with the children in their charge?

The relationship between adults and children is increasingly fraught, and viewed through the prism of risk. Not only teachers, neighbours and relatives, but even parents themselves are seen as potential abusers. But some childcare professionals and academics like Manchester Metropolitan University’s Heather Piper have begun to challenge this climate. Her book ‘Researching Sex and Lies in the Classroom’ is a critique of the ‘No Touch’ policies ubiquitous in schools and early years settings, and examines the insecurities surrounding adult-child relations. Not so long ago, those who saw something unwholesome in pictures of toddlers in the bath would be accused of having ‘dirty minds’. Nowadays, official policy and institutional practice works on the assumption that those working with children are ‘dirty-minded’ from the outset. Critics like Piper argue that when we are encouraged to view all physical contact with children as something to be avoided, in case it is perceived as inappropriate, we begin to apply a damaging check on every spontaneous interaction.

Meanwhile, family policy increasingly focuses on the need to protect children from the failings of parents, who could either pose a danger to their children, or simply not know what they’re doing. But some parents too have begun to express concerns about the idea that they’re hopeless and don’t try hard enough. Jennie Bristow argues in her book Standing up to Supernanny that the professionalisation of parenting undermines the authority of parents, and inhibits the spontaneous loving relationships with parents, and other adults, that children need in order to flourish.

So, how much do child protection policies help prevent abuse - and how much do they damage adults’ ability to conduct normal, caring relationships with the children in their charge?

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