Risk Anxiety,Policy, and the Spectre of Sexual Abuse in Early Childhood Education

How did early childhood education become “risky” for children and teachers? This paper takes a series of booklets written in the 1990s as a case study of the entry of official anxiety about sexual abuse in early childhood centres in New Zealand. I argue that these documents provided a basis for policy development which reflects risk anxiety rather than a proper, informed appraisal of any real dangers to children in early childhood education in New Zealand; in addition, the documents legitimate unprecedented ongoing (self‐)regulation of teachers' practices, regulation about which critical questions cannot be asked without being understood as “denial” of abuse. It is concluded that the original documents, and the policies they engender, have had the negative and illegitimate effect of producing “risk of abuse” as a normal aspect of contemporary early childhood education.