Actually

Now, let's get back to the concept of innocence for just a minute. You know how to tell it's bullshit without even having to observe the first child? Look at what the Church actually believes. They claim that children are born both super-innocent and instilled with Original Sin. In other words, kids are perfectly innocent and perfectly guilty at the same time! Talk about a schizophrenic worldview--not that utterly self-contradictory beliefs are unique to the Patriarchal Death Cults. But there you have it. And I only wasted two hours of my day to bring you to get to the point. ;-)

Yes -- currently.

This is certainly not the traditional Christian understanding.

And for once, I am not going to blame either the Feminists of 30-40 years ago, or the Progressives of, erm, the Progressive Era.

Childhood innocence was invented, out of his trou-de-cul, by Jean Jacques Rousseau, who introduced this novel and utterly bullshit concept in his educational theories.

I will leave out a greater expansion on what all I think of Rousseau. And it's not all negative, either.

However, what is undeniable is that he had a great influence in all the fields of social thought and social science he touched. In the particular case of education theory and child psychology, his influence is felt to this day. And after him, most others copied his bullshit idea of Childhood Innocence into their own understanding of childhood. The only big name thinkers after Rousseau, who spent a lot of time in child psychology and who completely disagree with Rousseau on Innocence, are Freud and direct disciples of Freud - and THAT should tell you something. Everyone else still essentially buys into that doctrine, even if they may disagree on some specifics of it. AND the Rousseaunian understanding of childhood permeated public consciousness shortly after his death - it was its moment, really, with the French and American Revolutions and the Romanticist movement in the arts. And it filtered all the way into the religion of the time, both Catholic and Protestant of all branches. Where it has survived. Where it nourished both the Socialist demands against child labor, the Progressive demands against child prostitution and marriage and for eugenics, the (classical) Liberal demands for more education and eventually the SocDem demands to raise ages of criminal responsibility - the other side of AOC. And, certainly, it also nourished the notion that Sex must be kept out of the reach of children.

But that is completely against the previous Christian doctrine. There used to be no doubt in the Western branches of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant alike, that children were born sinners and fully capable of sin, including the sins of lust like any other sins. Even the Anabaptists, who questioned infant baptism, didn't really question that children were capable of sinning, but only whether they had the rational commitment to Church implied by baptism. Both Luther and Calvin and the Popes they fought against would be surprized to see that modern Catholic and Protestant Christians seriously believe children to be "innocent."

In a way, I would say that almost killed Christianity as it was. But then, other things have radically changed the face of Christianity too. I may be biased too because I sincerely think the previous understanding was infinitely more accurate.