Although it seems worth noting that two of those also aren’t sexual. Also, plenty of people sleep naked, and I’ve yet to know anyone not born that way. Entire groups of people walk around mostly naked all their lives and manage to not have 24/7 orgies. If you’d like to argue that your culture sexualizes nudity, that’s fine. Please understand that’s not the same thing as nudity being inherently sexual.
I am neither pro nor anti-naked. But having been both naked and in the presence of naked people in plenty of non-sexual situations, I promise you that it’s really not the erotic experience that you imagine it to be.
Hmm. Well, I’m still not sure what I think about it. My mom was one of the most modest people I’ve ever known (she was embarrassed to wear shorts), but she was comfortable being partly or fully naked in front of me and my sister when it happened occasionally, and I’ve always been fine with it as well. I believe my father did the same until I was 4 or 5, but my mom asked him to stop when she heard my sister and I laughing that “Daddy has a thingy!” He was a child molester, though, so. Hard to say how I’d feel about seeing him naked at later ages if he were just a normal dad.
I definitely agree with this, at very least:
…or as AcidLamp said, when they’re uncomfortable - that is, they shouldn’t have to ask, in so many words, if they clearly don’t like it.
Oh, definitely. My kid’s not even 1 1/2, and already, it’s obvious that he knows exactly what he’s seeing, and knows it’s unusual (we do wear clothes most of the time), and that’s why he’s curious about it. However, as Anaamika said, that’s a totally different question. In my mind, a naked parent and a naked stranger are worlds apart.
Jesusgod. CCL’s mom, please see Anaamika’s comment above. Bleah.
Yeah, I didn’t want to make the poll too enormous. I was just kind of thinking along the lines of 0-1 = “baby”, 2-5 = “toddler/small child”, “6-9” = “older child”, “10-14” = “preteen/puberty”. I’d hope you voted for the appropriate range anyway, but I do appreciate you being more specific. Out of curiosity, is there any reason 3 1/2 seems the right age, where 2 would be young enough and 5 would be too old?
Heh.
Or you could look at it the other way around: the only actions that require any amount of clothing are those done in public (if you live in a society that wears clothing; quite a few don’t, or at least, not nearly as much as we do).
That’s the thing though - I’m not talking about social behaviors. I’m talking only about parent/child interactions in the privacy of one’s home.
Why not? Why do you do it, if you don’t think it’s normal? In any case, this isn’t what I’m talking about, either. I think there’s a huge difference between “I don’t wear clothes at home, even when my kids are present,” and “I am occasionally briefly naked in the course of my normal activities (showering, dressing), and sometimes this happens when my kids are present.” I’m not saying there’s necessarily anything wrong with the former, but I’m only talking about the latter.
I agree - but again, I’m not talking about friends or strangers, only family, specifically parents. There are lots of things I’d feel comfortable saying or doing only in front of my family and no one else. And some of those things, I’d only do in private.
Exactly. At least in my experience, kids who are too young to be reasoned with are too young to strip naked, unless we’re talking about autism or some other issue where the child doesn’t have normal understanding of social cues. My kid can’t get himself (entirely) out of his clothes yet, and for that matter, he’s never really tried. But he already understands “no”, and he understands the idea of certain actions being appropriate only in certain contexts (“you can zerbert mommy’s tummy, but not grandma’s”, “at daycare, your nap routine is abc, while at home it’s xyz”). So if a kid strips down in daycare, I can’t imagine they’d be asked not to come back. I would expect that the daycare would simply teach the kid “we don’t do that here”, as they would with any other inappropriate behaviors. If the kid can’t learn that, that’s certainly a problem in and of itself, but it wouldn’t be specific to nudity.
I also have no fear that anyone would see a kid undressing him or herself as a sign of inappropriate sexualization; some kids just do that, and anyone who works with kids would be well aware of that. However, I do have some qualms about what might happen if my kid tells someone that he sees his mommy and/or daddy naked. Not only a teacher or other adult who might freak out and call CPS, but also friends, who might label him (or us) as weird and gross, and ostracize him.
Very interesting. Do you have any cites for that? I believe you; I’d just be curious to read more about that.
Yeah, I wondered about that, too. I think part of it is that since the majority of people are hetero, a lot of folks assume their kids will be, too. As you say, sex is usually anathema when it comes to one’s parents, and there’s no way occasionally seeing your mom or dad naked would counteract that. As AClockworkMelon said, “Ugh. Dude, I’d fuck ten guys before I’d fuck my mom.” But I think that’s kind of the point - some parents are more uncomfortable with their opposite-sex kids seeing them naked not because of the kid’s sexuality, but because of their own. If a dad is not attracted to males, being naked around his son is no biggie, but being naked around a female can have a sexual overtone (even if it doesn’t necessarily), and so the feeling of doing something even potentially sexual around his daughter is at very least extremely off-putting to him.
Well then enlighten me on what “more careful” means if not “less nudity”. The context suggests that this was in response to the child’s question and it is exactly that attitude that I think is harmful in general. If I’m wrong about the detail it is because I’m filling in the gaps as I don’t know the full story.
So let us assume that I do know of some parents who choose to cover up their nudity after being questioned about pubic hair by their 2 year old. This isn’t you remember, this is a made up couple. In those circumstances I would say they did not have a healthy relationship with the human body and were unnecessarily prudish. You may disagree, that is up to you.
Which is perfectly admirable and correct but the arbitrary lines that people draw seem very strange to me. My opinion of course.
If the response to a perfectly innocent question about body hair from a 2 year old is to cover up further then actually yes, I do consider that evidence of those sort of attitudes that concern me.
And I agree fully with Gracer and DianaG in the following posts. They’ve summed my own attitude perfectly
[QUOTE=Heart of Dorkness;14656863Jesusgod. CCL’s mom, please see Anaamika’s comment above. Bleah.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, Mom and I have rather different ideas about modesty–and a substantial portion of her chasing me through the house trying to get me to look at her nipples was her conviction that casual, non-sexual nudity among the family isn’t and shouldn’t be any big deal. Why should it bother me? It’s just a boob, we’re both women, and we’re family, so what’s my problem?
Of course, Mom also tried to make me a sexual confidante after my dad had an affair when I was a teenager. We’re both girls, sex is natural and healthy, so what’s the big deal?
And yes, she ran around towelling herself off in the living room long after I wished she’d put on a damn robe already*. Because we’re both girls and family and incidental non sexual nudity isn’t a big deal, so why not?
*This point was before I could read. And yes, I was the kid who got the talk about how I shouldn’t touch or scratch myself in front of other people because those areas are private and asked how come the living room or hall was public for me digging around in my pants but private for Mom being naked. They didn’t have any sort of satisfactory answer.
Oohoh, been trying to find them, which is great procrastination I remember the article, read it years ago in a Dutch magazine, I think it was Psychologie Magazine, but I’m not even sure of that. I’ll keep looking and let you know…
Do you mean the hypothetical dad is worried about the way it is perceived, rather than the way he actually feels? Because I find it hard to imagine that really being what one would think around a child… But then, some people on this board seem to equate nudity with sex, so maybe…
My attitude is close to this hypothetical Dad’s. I stopped walking around the house naked when my daughter approached her tweens. I think there is a non-zero risk that someone outside the family would make a huge fuss about it in the way that The Worst Mom in the World was demonized when she let her (IIRC) 10 year old son ride a train on his own. I am relaxed about nudity and my daughter is relaxed about it too but I don’t want to risk the parents of a friend of a friend making a huge deal and embarrassing my daughter.
Something like this happened on the topic of walking home from school when my daughter was a fifth grader. The mother of her friend made it her business to give us all a big lecture about how a 10 year old girl walking 200 yards without parental protection would almost certainly be abducted and that we were negligent to even consider it. I’m willing to risk the almost-zero chance that my nudity would scar my daughter’s psyche but not the almost-inevitable chance that a well-meaning stranger would make a huge deal out of it.
I don’t walk around the house naked any more but if someone walks in on me in the bathroom or while changing - no big deal. My daughter has a similar attitude.
Her older brother, on the other hand, became very body conscious at a younger age and takes great pains to neither see nor be seen. That’s fine too. I respect both their attitudes and act accordingly.
Now what have I missed? What have I not understood? you haven’t explained what you mean by “more careful” nor why you chose to take that action. I’m left to draw conclusions as you refuse to clarify…fine, but that really is your choice. I can see you aren’t comfortable with giving the full story.
But you should know that it is infuriating when you are so cryptic and refuse to solve the clue for us. Say what you mean and fruitful discussion can follow. Your current stance is just a dead end.
I think it partially depends on the “culture of the home” so to speak. In my home, darting from room to room in the buff has never been an issue–we all do it and nobody cares, regardless of same/opposite sex, etc. If we were a household who never saw each other naked and suddenly someone started appearing sans-clothing it would be different and weird.
I wasn’t sure how to answer the poll … if I say 2 - 5 years, does that mean that 2 years is TOO old, or that somewhere in the 2-5 range is ideally when it should stop?
2 is too young to wait outside while mom uses a public restroom, I think, if we are counting that as nudity. But anyway, my answer is somewhere in the 2 - 5 range is where parental nudity from both parents would dramatically taper off, for our family.
For me, it’s more of a privacy issue than a modesty one. I like to think we have positive attitudes about the human body, but getting dressed, getting clean and other nude or semi-nude activities fall into my “blessed privacy” category. Because of this mindset, my spouse and I are also the kind of couple who don’t leave the door open while one of us is using the bathroom – on a lot of days, that 4 minutes is rare, valuable time that I have to myself to peacefully think my thoughts without anyone asking me stuff!
Well, in my example, I meant the way he actually feels, although I certainly understand having fear of how it might be perceived; I have those fears as well. But yeah, I could see how, if you’re a male, and the only time you’ve ever been naked in front of a female is if you’re in a sexual relationship with her, then being naked around your daughter - doing this thing that in all your other experiences has been sexual - could feel kind of… oogy. It might not be a huge deal, and one that could certainly be overcome if needed, but since there’s usually no need for you to be naked around her, you’d just avoid it.
But I don’t know whether anyone actually feels this way. I’m just saying it seems a reasonable reaction for someone to have.
Yes, both. If you have a specific age in mind that’s your cutoff point, such as 2, then you’d choose the appropriate range that contains that value (just like “How old are you?: 18-35, 36-50, etc.”). If you don’t have a specific age, but think that, for instance, 1 and below is definitely okay, and 6 and above is definitely not, then you’d also choose 2-5.
Again, that’s a different issue. I’d argue that in that case, you have no choice. I think if parental nudity is *required *in any way, it’s okay, no matter what the age. In my example, it’s optional. You’re not flaunting your nudity, but you’d only be slightly inconvenienced to put on a towel, robe, etc. I certainly wouldn’t do it if my kid said, “Jeez, ma! I don’t want to see that!” but if he is neither bothered by my nudity nor age-inappropriately fascinated by it, then I’m not sure there’s any reason to bother with that inconvenience.
My daughter is 7, and I stopped dressing/getting out of the shower in front of her when she started gasping in horror at my back side. My son is close behind… They like to laugh about my bum getting caught in a hail storm, and she almost cried when I told her she has my genes and she may have my body when she gets older.
I’m VERY modest anyway. As soon as my kids started talking I pretty much wore a robe anywhere in the house (when, before children, I would have gone nude).
My family goes by the maxim, “Nudity is often seen and never noticed.” My teenage children of both genders have seen me naked and vice versa. I will admit I tend to add bubbles if my daughter decides she wants to talk to me while I’m in the tub for some reason.
I’m a bit surprised at how many people think it’s inappropriate for same gender children to see a parent at any age. How do they handle normal things like showering at the Y or the country club after playing some sport with their kids? Heck, I’ve not only seen my son naked in that context but most of my extended family and in laws as well.
I avert my eyes when my daughter’s naked, but I also avert my eyes when using a communal changing room. To me, that is the social taboo - not the nakedness but the looking directly at it.
In this regard we’re prudish as all hell as I don’t think I’ve been naked in front of my daughter at all, maybe a couple of times when she was a newborn.
We’re very clear about boundaries and knock at closed doors, including when we enter her (occupied) room. Accidents don’t occur (except for that one time she walked in… during… but she was 2, 3 yo.)
As for my wife, I would say she stopped around 2-4 years old - I never really thought to ask, and probably won’t.
I’m starting to wonder about this. My parents were occasionally naked in front of me until I was at least ten, and I was intending to do a similar thing with my kids, but… the way my four-year-old is staring at me and totally nipple-obsessed is starting to creep me out. I get curiosity, but when he starts asking to see mine, or (only once, thank the listening powers) asking me to touch his nipples, I kind of worry. A lot.
And am creeped out.
We have had the, “private parts are private” talk, plus, “Don’t touch yourself in public” (more commonly followed up by thousands of injunctions to get your hands out of your pants/out of your shirt), plus, don’t ask other people to touch your private parts/ask to touch theirs, but this all seems so, uh, soon? I guess? He’s going to be four in two days, and I wasn’t expecting to have to such intense interest so young.
All of our children were brought up from an early age as Naturists or Nudists as they say in the States. We, as a family, went on holidays to a Naturist resort in the South of France in the 1980s and we had our own Naturist club in Natal, South Africa. Even today at close to 70, I am not ashamed of my body and we still go to Naturist places when we can. Our children have grown up to be very level headed and none of us lock a bathroom door unless we have guests.
I remember the article, read it years ago in a Dutch magazine, I think it was Psychologie Magazine, but I’m not even sure of that. I’ll keep looking and let you know…