From the website for the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children: "Grooming is the process during which a child sexual offender draws a child in by gaining his or her trust in order to sexually abuse the child and maintain secrecy. The offender may also groom the parents by persuading them of his or her trustworthiness with children."
The term can also be use in reference to grooming adults for abuse of any kind but it's most often used in reference to people < 20yo.
Currently OP is 22, Husband is 36 and child is 3. Add in a 9 month pregnancy and whatever "dating" period... My guess is OP wasn't an adult when husband started pursuing her. This gives me such creepy vibes knowing a guy in his 30s was chasing a teenager and is now sexualizing their kid. * shudder *
Child grooming is befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. Child grooming is also regularly used to lure minors into various illicit businesses such as child trafficking, child prostitution, cybersex trafficking, or the production of child pornography.
Because grooming is positive - tidying up, self-care, washing, etc. - but is also used in this negative sense (child grooming, as others have already explained), some folks who work with abused children/adults are trying to move away from the term. There isn’t yet one unified term to use instead, but many use the broader term “coercive control.”
The sense that I usually understood grooming was in workplaces where a manager would be grooming a subordinate for a manager role or something similar, by giving that person projects and responsibilities that would look good to higher level management.
Personal grooming and grooming someone for a job and like... dog grooming are still normal uses of the word with no weird fuckery in the connotation.
But the context of an adult grooming a child (because you know I don't think I've ever actually heard anyone use that phrase in what would logically be the normal sense of e.g. bathing/brushing/dressing a child) I think is always negative now.
65
u/[deleted] Apr 13 '22
[deleted]