Do we have to talk about it? : A qualitative study on preschoolers' approaches and strategies regarding children's integrity and sexuality

The main purpose of this qualitative interview study is to highlight and visualize preschoolteachers’ attitudes and working practices regarding children’s integrity and sexuality. Ourambition is to visualize preschool teachers' strategies to avoid discrimination againstchildren's integrity and sexuality and contribute to increased interest in discussing this inpreschools to create similar strategies in all preschools in Sweden. Our method of collectingdata for this study is through interviews. We chose this method to be able to analyzepreschool teachers’ statements and link them to theoretical perspectives. We interviewedpreschool teachers as our primary source of information, and supplemented this withadditional data from the police to gain a wider perspective of the complex issues that arisewhen studying children’s integrity and sexuality. The theoretical perspectives of this study areinfluenced by a queer theory which treats and focuses on areas related to exclusion andnormalization processes. The queer theory is inspired by Foucault and his perspective ofpower, Foucault also described how we find our identity in sexuality.The national documents developed for preschools in Sweden tend to be vague which leads tointelligible and unspecific guidelines for how preschool teachers are supposed to work withchildren's integrity and sexuality. The results of this study conclude that communication isessential to a progressive and more ethical way of dealing with children’s integrity andsexuality