The present article explores how situated queerness takes place in relation to the construction of child and childhood. Lee Edelman (2004) argues that the child is opposed to, and in need of protection from contact with, homosexuality, which means that the queer cannot be part of the political fantasies of the future in which the child is central. In view of this, but unlike Edelman, I argue in this article that the child is part of different future fantasies, where the child is not necessarily separated from queerness. Here, I present contemporary connections between the child and queerness and analyze how possibilities and limitations appear in relation to this. Through two case studies, the article takes on a multi-sited approach (Marcus 1995), following when queerness is introduced on arenas where childhood is constructed. The first case is located to a preschool where the staff recently carried out hbtq-education and -certification and the analyzed data is one group interview with five preschool teachers and their principle. The second case is located in social media and consists of reactions on the presence of lesbian characters in the children’s comic Bamse, where 326 commentary posts around this topic are analyzed. Based on critical perspectives on age and sexuality, this article discuss what normalizations about childhood and heterosexuality are being made, and how these normalizations condition how queer sexuality can be present within the two childhood arenas represented in the material. Conclusions drawn are that both in the preschool and in the adults’ reactions to children’s culture, heterosexuality passes unnoticed, while queerness is made something remarkable. The relationship between queer and childhood can here be understood as both requested and questioned, which I present as conditioned queerness, and the child and childhood as spaces where different discourses about the child’s best and desirable future are negotiated

The present article focuses on how ‘sexual orientation’ is represented and produced in a Swedish preschool policy document regarding discrimination and equal treatment. ‘Poststuctural policy analysis’ is employed, in line with Foucault) and Bacchi. The results show that ‘sexual orientation’ is represented as a matter for families, but for parents rather than children. In the plans for equal treatment, visualizing different families stands out as the goal of working preventively against discrimination based on ‘sexual orientation’ in preschool, and the active measures planned for are reading books and spontaneous conversations. The article argues that the discrimination perspective represented in the documents, together with discourses on childhood innocence, establish certain conditions for how ‘sexual orientation’ is produced in preschool.

Focusing on children’s play, the present article explores how 3- to 6-year-old children (re)produce, (re)negotiate and challenge heteronormativity in a Swedish Early Childhood Education setting. The article is based on ethnographic data, focusing on (re)production of heteronormativity in a particular kind of idealized, often feminine-coded and peer-group play with a low degree of teacher participation, labelled ‘Mum, Dad, Child play’ by the children. Our results show that children’s play is structured by certain themes, such as family and home, and certain gendered and/or age-coded positions, such as mother, father, child or baby. Age difference (child/adult) proves to be the cornerstone of the heteronormative family metaphor of the play, where the child/baby position is central. To describe the intersections of age, gender and sexuality in our analysis, we suggest the use of the concept of age-coded heteronormativity.

This article explores how life schedules and life courses that are organized chronologically become part of normalized heterosexuality in children’s conversations and play. The analysis draws on ethnographic data from a Swedish preschool, focusing on situations where children engage with themes such as romantic love, kisses and weddings. Queer temporal perspectives are applied to challenge how normativity and norm-challenging are perceived, not least in relation to how desirable futures for children are displayed. The article shows that children engage with love discourses in ways that both reproduce and challenge heteronormativity and linear temporalities in normative life course and life schedules.