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This paper explores the social organization of child sex abuse within the family and offers a socio-cognitive explanation of the psychological phenomena of dissociative amnesia and memory recollection. Psychological analyses of child sex abuse and memory impairment are inherently limited in that most fail to address the social foundations of memory and the cognitive asymmetry of power characteristic of the parent-child relationship. The roles of perpetrator, victim, and enabler are discussed, and two scenarios are examined to illustrate a particular type of framing I call cognitive masking - the deliberate disguising of one social experience as another. Perpetrators exploit essential features of parenthood to render the victim in a state of cognitive constraint, limiting the child?s immediate interpretation and future recollection of the experience. Authoritative control over the cognitive options of the child ought to be recognized as an important feature of parenthood. Extending frame analysis to span the victim's life course, adult recollection of child sex abuse can be better understood as a mnemonic realignment with reframed past parent-child interactions upon achieving a degree of cognitive emancipation from the abusive environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]