IJFS - Interdisciplinary Journal of Family Studies

This article analyzes social representations concerning children presumed to be victims of sexual abuse and childhood as a social category, and how such representations contribute to a definition of abuse as a social problem. The results come from an ethnographic study and highlight how different social actors, including parents, construct and deconstruct ambivalent representations of childhood within media and social arenas. The conflict between cultures of different professional groups enhances the ambivalence of such representations. Risk, agency, and vulnerability are concepts that explain social dynamics and relations between these different social actors in a society made sensitive to emotions and risks and where therapy culture plays a fundamental role in defining abuse as a social problem.