127,669 articles
Child pornography laws in the United States
U.S. federal child pornography law: statutes 18 U.S.C. 2251-2260 define and punish visual depictions of sexually explicit conduct involving minors; Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) limits virtual-image bans; penalties and reporting duties.
Child prodigy
Child prodigy: a child reaching adult-expert, professional-level achievement before age 10, mainly in rule-based domains like music, mathematics, art, and chess; distinct from tested giftedness, with elevated working memory and possible autism-family links.
Child prostitution
Child prostitution, now termed exploitation of children in/for prostitution, is the use of a child in sexual activities for remuneration; a crime under the CRC Optional Protocol and ILO Convention 182, increasingly technology-facilitated.
Child protection
Child protection comprises systems and services preventing and responding to violence, exploitation, neglect, and abuse of children. Key facts: UNICEF definition, WHO's 1 billion violence estimate, institutional versus foster care outcomes, and humanitarian strain.
Child sacrifice
Child sacrifice is the ritual killing of children as an offering to a deity, documented in the ancient Near East, the Phoenician world, and pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica and the Andes.
Child selling
Child selling is the exchange of a child for payment, for sexual exploitation, forced labor, illegal adoption, or organs; a 2000 UN protocol obliges states to criminalize it.
Child sex tourism
Child sex tourism, also called sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT), is travel by domestic or international offenders to sexually exploit children; ECPAT, founded 1990 in Chiang Mai, leads the response.
Child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse: involvement of a child in sexual activity without informed consent, by someone in trust or power. Also CSA. Types, global prevalence (1 in 5 women, 1 in 7 men self-report), measurement tools, consequences, and prevention.
Child sexuality
Child sexuality: the sexual behaviors, feelings, and cognitions of children, also called problematic sexual behavior (PSB) when developmentally inappropriate or harmful in children 12 and under; meta-analysis of 47 samples links it most strongly to externalizing symptoms (g=.95) and sexual abuse (g=.71).
Child soldiers in Africa
Child soldiers in Africa: children under 18 recruited by state forces and armed groups, also called children associated with armed forces or groups. Defined by the Paris Principles; over 105,000 verified cases worldwide 2005–2022; persists in South Sudan, Sudan, CAR, Somalia, Sahel, and eastern DRC.
Child support
Child support is money paid by a noncustodial parent to the custodial parent to help raise children after separation; courts may order either or both parents to pay.
Child support guidelines in the United States
Child support guidelines in the United States are state presumptive formulas, required by federal law since 1984 and made rebuttable presumptions in 1988, using income shares (41+ states), percentage-of-income (6 states), or Melson formula (3 states) models.
Child support in Australia
Child support in Australia is assessed by Services Australia under the Child Support (Assessment) Act 1989 using an eight-step formula based on both parents' incomes, care percentages, and Costs of Children tables; the scheme began in 1988 and was reformed in 2006-2008.
Child support in the United Kingdom
Child support (child maintenance) in the UK: payments from a non-resident parent, arranged privately or via the Child Maintenance Service (Direct Pay or Collect and Pay), calculated from gross income under the Child Support Act 1991 system.
Child support in the United States
Child support in the United States: court-ordered payments from noncustodial parents, enforced through the federal-state Title IV-D Child Support Enforcement program created in 1975, run by HHS's OCSE with 66% federal reimbursement, distributing $27.4 billion in FY2022.
Child-on-child sexual abuse
Child-on-child sexual abuse (COCSA), also called peer-on-peer abuse, is sexual abuse in which one minor abuses another, typically where an imbalance of age, development, or power prevents informed consent.
Childeric I
Childeric I (c. 436–481), Merovingian king of the Salian Franks from about 458, son of Merovech and father of Clovis I; Roman-allied ruler of Belgica Secunda buried at Tournai, whose 1653-discovered grave yielded gold bees and the Childerici regis signet ring.
Childhood amnesia
Childhood amnesia, or infantile amnesia, is adults' inability to recall episodic events before about age 3, with sparse memories from ages 3 to 7; explanations span hippocampal maturation, neurogenesis, self and language development, and cultural variation.
Childhood Autism Rating Scale
The Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) is a clinician-rated behavioral measure of autism severity in children, introduced by Eric Schopler and colleagues in 1980, rating 15 domains on a 15 to 60 scale.
Childhood nudity
Childhood nudity: children's exposure to non-sexual nakedness in family, naturist, school, and public settings. Key evidence includes the 18-year UCLA Family Lifestyles Project (200 children), cultural variation such as Finnish sauna practice, and legal distinctions from sexualized imagery.
Children Act 1989
The Children Act 1989 is the principal statute on children in England and Wales, combining private law disputes between parents with the state's public-law powers to protect children.
Children Act 2004
Children Act 2004 (2004 c. 31), UK statute of 15 November 2004 providing the legal backbone of Every Child Matters: section 11 safeguarding duty, Local Safeguarding Children Boards, Children's Commissioner for England, and Welsh children's services provisions.
Children and Family Relationships Act 2015
The Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 (No. 9 of 2015) is Irish legislation reforming guardianship, custody, access, and, uniquely, assigning legal parentage for donor-assisted human reproduction, establishing the National Donor-Conceived Person Register and banning anonymous donation from 4 May 2020.
Children in Need
BBC Children in Need is the BBC's UK charity, registered charity 802052, raising funds for disadvantaged children via the annual telethon first held in 1980; over £1 billion raised and distributed as grants of £1,000 to £40,000 per year.
Children in the Holocaust
Children in the Holocaust, also called Holocaust children, were Jewish and non-Jewish minors persecuted and killed by Nazi Germany, including about 1.5 million Jewish children.
Children in the military
Children in the military covers children recruited or used by armed forces and armed groups (child soldiers) and children of service members. Over 105,000 cases verified 2005–2022; recruiting under-15s is a war crime; Paris Principles (2007) guide release and reintegration.
Children of Llullaillaco
Children of Llullaillaco (los Niños del Llullaillaco): three Inca children, the Maiden, the Boy, and the Lightning Girl, sacrificed in the capacocha rite around 1499 and found frozen in 1999 near the 6,739-m summit of Volcán Llullaillaco, Salta, Argentina.
Children of Muhammad
The children of Muhammad, also called Muhammad's children, were by the majority account three sons, all of whom died in childhood, and four daughters, of whom only Fatimah survived him.
Children Overboard affair
Children Overboard affair: 2001 Australian political controversy in which Howard government ministers falsely claimed asylum seekers on SIEV 4 threw children into the sea near Christmas Island; disproved by Senate inquiries, but never corrected before the 2001 election.
Children's Crusade
Children's Crusade: popular religious movement of 1212, also called peregrinatio puerorum, led by Stephen of Cloyes (France) and Nicholas of Cologne (Germany); unauthorized, dispersed at Genoa, composition debated.