Social Deviance
Name
Institution
Professor
Date
Social Deviance
The Difference Between Pedophiles and Child Molesters
as much as pedophile as a term is often used to refer to all child sexual offenders, the definition is highly contested. While several child molesters do not have a certain strong sexual intrest in children of the prepubescent age, pedophiles do have strong sexual attraction to children of the prepubescent age. While child sexual molesters might not neccesarily have motives behind their sexual acts like stress, marital challenges, the lack of an adult partner, high sex drives, alcohol use and general tendencies of antisocial behaviors, pedophiles are often motivated by these factors. Child molesters generally account to the different groups of sexual offenders for children while pedophiles are just one of the categories of child molesters (Goode et al., 2008).
While child molesters sexually molest children, pedophiles do not necessarily molest children. Pedophiles use other tactics like criminal and clinical violations.
Child molesters have no control against abusing children. However, pedophiles who do not abuse alcohol, tgose who who belive and enforce norms and rules as well as those who are sensitive to other people’s feelings always refrain from molesting children. While child molesters must not always have neurological deficits, pedophiles often have neurological deficits that cause disruptions in some regions of their brains.
Why This Distinction is Sociologically Relevant
It is important to differentiate between child molesters and pedophiles because it is criminal for adults to have sexual contacts with monors.additionally, pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which pedophiles are attracted to prepubescents (Goode et al., 2008).as much as this would also be regarded as a wrong behaviour, the involuntary sexual attraction that a pedohhile feels, makes it difficult to determine whether it is wrong or right. It is therefore important not to confuse a psychiatric disorder which might require treatment with sex crimes which require legitimate actions against it. This difference is relevant to prevent the occurrence of an unclear moral reasoning.
Reference
Goode, Erich & D. Angus Vail. (2008). Extreme Deviance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press: 978-1-4129-3722-1