In this article, we focus on sex education in schools and not sex education in general, which has different audiences, purposes, aims and scope. Swedish sex education has had a reputation as being very liberal and sex-friendly, providing the most advanced information for primary- and secondary-school pupils and students from the mid-20th century onwards. When following the trajectory of sex education into the schooling system, from the start of the 20th century, it becomes clear that the teaching targeted gendered bodies associated with varying risks. Different actors involved in the process make different associations between health promotion, bodies and risk, and a key finding is that the state uses risk as a productive force when promoting sex education in school, while at the same time excluding knowledge about the visual anatomy of the clitoris and the glans, i.e., organs vital to the experiencing of sexual desire. Contemporary Swedish sex education remains a discourse that revolves around health promotion and risk, and the state guidelines (still) lack visual presentations of bodies with organs for desire. In this article, we trace how versions of health promotion have regulated and constrained children’s and young people’s sexuality.

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic reached Sweden in the early 1980s, a “national crisis” erupted. Several policy measures were taken, including the appointment of an AIDS delegation to coordinate efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, including several major nationwide information campaigns. However, previous research has not paid attention to the role of education in the work against HIV/AIDS in Sweden. This article is a case study describing the efforts made by the Swedish National Agency for Education to reach out to teachers and students with sex education, including values education relating to HIV/AIDS. It examines how this particular government agency strategised in order to implement its own ideas about how to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in schools. The goal of the new sexuality education was not only to change students’ attitudes, but also to change their sexual behaviour, according to the agency. A prominent theme in this values education was to train students to deal with their fear of death, which was directly related to HIV/AIDS. Key questions are: how did the government agency for education deal with the new situation when the HIV/AIDS epidemic arrived in Sweden? What did its suggestions for a reformed sex education entail? What images of young people and sexuality did the agency construct in its efforts to fight the epidemic?

This article examines what we can learn about kindergarten childhoods when using archived records about children’s free play with building blocks in the 1930s. Taking its starting point in previous research about how Froebelian building blocks have been part of kindergarten ideology and education, the article explores how visual and textual sources promote different versions of childhoods in and around a kindergarten institution. Moreover, the article argues for the importance of not only paying attention to children’s archived visual and verbal voices, but more noticeably, also to girls’ and boys’ non-verbal activities and engagement, i.e., non-verbal “voices”.

Hur har sexualundervisningen i den svenska skolan utvecklats från det tidiga 1900-talet och fram till idag? I Samhällets sak att sköta tar författarna avstamp i en stor mängd arkivmaterial och läromedel för att fånga hur den statliga politiken agerat på ett avgörande sätt för hur området utvecklats och villkorats.

Sexualundervisningen har ofta debatterats – både i och utanför skolans värld. Författarna följer vilka argument för och emot sexualundervisning som förts fram liksom hur olika synsätt på de ungas sexualitet framkommit.

Även inom skolan har åsikterna gått isär. Författarna har samlat röster från lärare, elever och vårdnadshavare för att ge en bred förståelse av diskussionerna. Berättel­serna vittnar om motstridiga åsikter och uppfattningar om undervisningen – dess utformning, omfattning och existens i klassrummet. Över åren har dock konsensus vuxit fram om att det ska vara skolans ansvar att ge barn och unga kunskaper om sexualitet och relationer – det har blivit samhällets sak att sköta.

This article presents how a timeline can be used to improve the quality of qualitative and interdisciplinary child studies research with a focus on documents and archives. A particular case, Swedish school sex education from the 1880s until 2022, is used to present and describe the advantages of applying what we refer to as timeline-thinking practices. We, the authors, from two interdisciplinary disciplines, reflect upon our own research process during a four-year project, in which we have interpreted many document sources and actors with the help of timelines. We describe timeline-thinking practices focused on empirical sources and interpretation as a joint, collaborative, time-consuming, creative, and engaging activity. Periodization was used as a starting point, and we explore how year-triggering periodization and concept-triggering periodization actualized varying versions of school sex education. Despite the chronological structure of timelines, they forced us to move back and forth in time, which improved the quality of the joint interpretations and led to truly collaborative work. Hence, the timeline-thinking practices we employed helped us to both identify more connections and handle messiness in a systematic way; they encouraged deep thinking and reflection, and improved the reliability of the interdisciplinary research.

This paper provides a discourse analysis of 12 Swedish sexuality education texts intended for preschool practitioners and published between 1969 and 2021. Using Fairclough’s framework, we identify three discourses about children’s sexual play in relation to children’s sexual agency in the texts: child sexuality as encouraged and entangled with adult sexuality; child sexuality as conditioned by what is perceived as normal or abnormal in children; and child sexuality as repressed. These three discourses mainly appear chronologically, but also overlap and connect with one another. When analysis begins from children’s position and a theoretical understanding of children’s and adults’ agency as interdependent, it becomes possible to see how the child is construed as agentic, and how the adult role changes from encouraging sexual play to regulating and monitoring behaviour so that it does not occur. Over time, discourse on young children’s sexual play has changed our understanding of both adults and children. Adults are increasingly construed as less knowledgeable in relation to young children’s sexuality, and young children have become understood as more dangerous and in need of having their sexuality constrained and civilised.

Vad karaktäriserar förskolans historia och vilka synsätt på barn skapas i och runt förskolan? Det är frågor som söker svar i det här kapitlet. Kapitlet ger exempel på hur man kan skriva förskolehistoria och det ger även underlag för att reflektera kring dagens förskola med dess uppfattningar om barn.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is key to ensure equal opportunities for children, particularly for those whose mother tongue differs from the local language. Yet, disparities in ECEC enrolment based on childrens‘ ethnic origin persist, both in Germany and elsewhere. For this reason, the International Centre for Early Childhood Education and Care (ICEC) at the German Youth Institute (Deutsches Jugendinstitut, DJI) carries out research on unequal opportunities for children from migrant families to participate in ECEC. The LoKi research project on local governance and inclusive ECEC in migrant societies (Lokale Steuerung und bedarfsorientierte Kindertagesbetreuung in Migrationsgesellschaften; 2024-2026) explores the institutional interfaces of early childhood education policies and integration policies in Germany and Sweden – two countries that experience continous migration. The aim of the study is to better understand local approaches and cross-sector cooperation in the making of inclusive ECEC service provision in the two countries. Taking on a comparative perspective, a closer exmination of the institutional context related to integration in the selected countries is needed, including current policies as well as key actors and their responsibilities. To this purpose, in addition to own desk research in Germany, the ICEC has comissioned an expert report on integration policy measures in early childhood education in Sweden. Prof Anne-Li Lindgren from Stockholm University, and Prof Tünde Puskás from Linköping University, have compiled the report at hand on current developments on this topic.We take this opportunity to thank Prof Lindgren and Prof Puskás for supporting our project with their valuable expertise and for a very fruitful and enriching cooperation.

This study explores the ‘sex-map’, a didactic object developed in Sweden. The analysis focuses on teacher guidelines and an animated movie for classroom use and how the sex-map becomes a method for emphasizing students as actors in defining sexuality. Building on Mol’s notion of ontonorms, the emphasis is on ways in which the ontology of young sexuality is associated with arguments about what is ‘good’ in and for sex education. The sex-map incorporates ideal students’ experiences, discoveries, and positive feelings. Via students, a critique is mounted against one-path sexuality, underscoring the importance of ‘good’ non-hierarchical sexuality as exemplary sex education.