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In this discussion children’s difficult citizenship is examined within the contentious context of children being considered sexual citizens. The relationship of childhood to sexuality is fraught with difficulties, controversies, and complexities; it is one openly and officially based on exclusion, with children constituted as requiring protection from sexuality, considered an ‘adults’ only’ domain, dangerous to children. Hegemonic discourses of childhood and innocence are examined in the ways in which they have been utilized to strictly regulate children’s access to knowledge of sexuality and to deny their relevance and access to sexual citizenship. Utilizing a Foucaultian theoretical framework, it is argued that the regulation of children’s access to knowledge of sexuality is primarily linked to the ways in which childhood and innocence are utilized as a means through which the ‘good’ heteronormative adult citizenship subject is …