In all my travels and years in development work, I always find the plight of children to be disturbing. As a foreigner and tourist in developing countries, I can’t help but notice children in the streets begging or being involved in the flesh trade. It is the latter that I find most upsetting. I know that the main reason behind these activities is poverty. But I can’t also help but wonder if children engaged in sex work are pure victims, or do they exercise human agency in making sense of, and living in the social world of sex work? What aspects of sex work are open to their decision-making? And how do children decide and interpret their engagement in this occupation?
ADULTHOOD AND RATIONALITY
Many studies have been conducted on the involvement of children in sex work, but very few studies have dealt with the issue from the perspective of the child, as it is being lived and experienced by the child herself. Policies and laws regarding children reflect the social construction of children as incompetent human beings who lack reason and are thus “incapable of supporting themselves and of acting for their best interest.” Because of their perceived inability to act rationally, children are not allowed to participate in the adult world, and are seen to require the protection and supervision of adults. It is this adult bias that leads society to approach the issue of children’s sex work from an adult perspective.
However, there is no defining line that distinguishes the rational adult from the rational child. While adulthood is associated with full rationality, childhood cannot be considered as a period of complete lack of reason, since maturity and development of reason is a gradual process through the acquisition of ideas and experiences. As such, I contend that regardless of the limitation of knowledge and experiences of the child, the child makes sense of the social world in the process of living in it. I support the contention that human beings both act in the social world, and are acted upon by it.
In general, adults are assumed to be the only knowledgeable, active and competent social actors in society. Children are considered incapable of making the right decisions and taking the right actions because they are not yet equipped with the skill to make rational decisions, and they lack the knowledge of the rules and structures of society that would enable them to become active and competent actors. Thus, as a rule, adults make decisions for children until such time that the latter are deemed competent and fully capable of deciding and acting for their best interests.
In most countries, the transition from childhood to adulthood is defined by age; a person is considered to be an adult upon reaching the age of 18 years. Only then can the person act and be treated as an adult. Individuals have to undergo a process of socialization throughout their childhood and adolescence in order to prepare them to become adults. It is through the socialization process that social actors learn the social rules and structures of society that would guide their behavior and actions in any situation.
Through socialization, children are taught the idea of self-determination, and of agency, during this preparatory phase. They learn to exercise their agency. Society has even formed social structures that would facilitate a more ordered socialization of children. First and foremost of these are the family and school.
However, in the case of the children sex workers who are living apart from their family, and are not in school, their socialization has to be continued in their everyday life, and with the social actors in sex work. Sex work can then be considered as both the context and the process by which the children sex workers are socialized into a world of social inequality, based on social class, gender and age.
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