On reflection, most adults didn't care much about underage sex until they were able to leveraged it into public outrage - and therefore power for themselves.
The proof of this lies with pre-1980s generations of child sex abuse victims, who knew (or quickly learned) to not go to adults in authority - especially police. At best, they could be expect to be ignored, marginalized and/or gaslighted. At worst could be more abuse, even if 'only' verbal, physical, etc.
Reality is that most adults in authority didn't give a crap about child abuse until they could use abuse allegations as a weapon.
Once they (police, legislators, administrators, etc) gained that power, all kinds of things suddenly became abuse, including consensual sexual activity.
"Think of the children" tends to be code for "figure out how to leverage the children".
> Reality is that most adults in authority didn't give a crap about child abuse until they could use abuse allegations as a weapon.
Even if that's true about "adults in authority", doesn't make it true about adults in general, and I'd be very, very surprised if it's generally true about adults that are parents.
I also find it ironic, that some seem to see the unwarranted, power-imbalance-driven exercise of authority over other adults, as more heinous and egregious, than the unwarranted, power-imbalance-driven exercise of (sexual) authority over children.
I agree that parents aren't the primary beneficiaries of the power that comes from modern child abuse allegations (nor are non-connected adults). They are a critical source of that power, however.
For context, I'd like to note that prior to outrage being the pregurgitated social response for child abuse, parents didn't really have any go-to reactions prepared for them.
It wasn't uncommon for parents feelings of shame and confusion to push them toward quarantining their child (exasperating that child's sense of isolation and fault). It certainly wasn't standard was for parents to seek justice for the perpetrator.
My 20th century American experience is that authority wasn't there to advocate for children who've been mistreated. Most egregiously, police - who society specifically entrusted with the responsibility of stopping child abuse - weren't known as people that abused children could reach out to for protection. If they had been, child abuse scandals wouldn't have progressed far beyond the original victim.
But once child abuse could be leveraged into gobs of power, suddenly child abuse advocates were loudly everywhere.
> But once child abuse could be leveraged into gobs of power, suddenly child abuse advocates were loudly everywhere.
Or, alternatively, those parents (who as you rightly point out, in previous generations, didn't really have anywhere to go), and more importantly, the victims, realised that speaking out didn't come with as high a social cost as previously thought. And that when they did speak out, the many people who would have had little, if any, exposure to this kind of thing, were horrified at the detail.
I'd also add, that in the past, many "beat cops" would have been at a loss as to how to deal with these issues. Of all crimes reported, police apparently hated "domestics" the most, as there was no clear guidelines for them to follow.
It's very easy for people to ascribe other causes to these things when you have little experience with kids, and no experience with abuse. Not everything is a deep-state ploy to entrench power and control.
EDITED: their > there. And a bunch of other grammatical errors.
Seriously, why do I always spot a mistake after I've hit submit?
Your assertion is that the assumed social cost was overblown and that an entire nation failed to realize that - all the way up until the 1980s.
I think what is more likely is that millions of individuals who were were in terrible and desperate situations used the combined wisdom of their extended (& often wise) family and took an accurate read on their actual society.
The proof of this lies with pre-1980s generations of child sex abuse victims, who knew (or quickly learned) to not go to adults in authority - especially police. At best, they could be expect to be ignored, marginalized and/or gaslighted. At worst could be more abuse, even if 'only' verbal, physical, etc.
Reality is that most adults in authority didn't give a crap about child abuse until they could use abuse allegations as a weapon. Once they (police, legislators, administrators, etc) gained that power, all kinds of things suddenly became abuse, including consensual sexual activity.
"Think of the children" tends to be code for "figure out how to leverage the children".