Historically, law in Canada has been essentially punitive rather than protecting of juveniles, and enforcement has been uneven and discriminatory. Recent reform proposals focus on sanctioning clients and pimps of juvenile prostitutes. While traditionally, economic necessity and lack of other marketable skills have been viewed as prime factors in juvenile prostitution, studies suggest that these factors are operative for only a relatively small percentage of juvenile prostitutes. Rather, the opportunity for rapid financial gain, coupled with the commercialization of sex and the consumer culture, appears to be a more important motivation. It is argued that much contemporary discourse and intervention relating to juvenile prostitution follows from an historic pattern of regulating family life through the prescription and proscription of sexual behavior. Contemporary medicolegal discourses on sexuality grant authority to certain professional classes, while reinforcing an essentially conservative biopolitical economy mediated through the agencies of the social welfare state. In the case of juvenile prostitution, there has been a pathologizing of family relations and the offering up of State-sanctioned and mandated legal and therapeutic interventions designed to restore 'healthy,' normative sexuality. 45 references.