# Any evidence that teaching kids about healthy boundaries and consent to physical contact reduces abuse? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 28, 2022, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-evidence-that-teaching-kids-about-healthy-boundaries-and-consent-to-physical-contact-reduces-abuse/977225 "2022-12-28T16:41:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 12
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2022, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-evidence-that-teaching-kids-about-healthy-boundaries-and-consent-to-physical-contact-reduces-abuse/977225/12 "2022-12-28T20:52:03Z")
> [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > I don’t think we should accept, “It must be true because we can’t investigate it.” But let’s not confuse two things. In some cases, we would like to obtain empirical data, but it’s tricky to design an experiment to obtain that data, for practical or ethical reasons. The _details_ of parenting strategy - how and when to teach kids about bodily autonomy, whether it should apply to grandma’s sloppy kisses - would fall into that category: > [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](#): > > Give 10,000 mothers a pamphlet on bodily autonomy and consent. Ask them if they make their kids hug and kiss grandma. Fifteen, 20, and 25 years later… …perhaps you’ve answered your own question there about why reliable studies in this area may be hard to find. And the outcomes for _others_ (potential victims of the children in the study) would be even more difficult to ascertain, all you would have to go on would be actual criminal convictions. Teaching children about their own right to bodily autonomy obviously goes hand in hand with teaching them to respect the autonomy of others. But at a more fundamental level, the question of whether kids should learn about bodily autonomy and consent _at all_ does not derive from empirical data, it derives from ethics. Children should learn about it for the same reason that they should learn that torturing pets is wrong. Bodily autonomy and consent is a fundamental human right that we all _should_ understand. Recent increasing emphasis is not just trendy parenting, it’s because of our increasing awareness that so many adults are ignorant of (or willfully ignore) this right. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-evidence-that-teaching-kids-about-healthy-boundaries-and-consent-to-physical-contact-reduces-abuse/977225)._