The naked truth about nudity
For something so common, being naked in front of your kids can leave some parents red-faced and confused. Serena Solomon reports.
When Jenny Wishart’s son was 3, she had an appointment for her annual pap smear, but no childcare. Instead of cancelling an important health appointment, she decided to bring him along, imagining he would play with some toys in a corner while she sat bare-bottomed in front of the gynaecologist.
‘‘The procedure is happening and before you know it, this little head pops up to say hello,’’ said Wishart, who blogs about her life in Wellington as a mum of two boys. ‘‘Children are so naturally curious.’’
Whether parents like to admit it or not, their children have probably seen them naked more times than either party cares to count.
It could be a parent demonstrating how to use the toilet. Or the clash between supervising a child and a desperate need for a shower. Or, for parents in the naturist movement, intentionally showing their kids the joys of being in the buff.
But for something so common, it’s still a subject that can leave parents red-faced and confused about when and how to set healthy boundaries.
‘‘While you may or may not be comfortable being naked around your tamariki, we should be teaching our children what a normal adult body looks like and when it is and isn’t OK to be naked,’’ said Anne Marie Morris, a PlunketLine manager, in a statement to Stuff.
Parents will have different levels of comfort in being naked with their child and that can change from culture to culture, said Morris. Ultimately, healthy boundaries should be child-led.
‘‘Your tamariki will use cues when they’re no longer comfortable being naked around you, for example asking to use the bathroom alone or wanting to change in their room privately,’’ she said.
Emily Holdaway, who lives in Hamilton, isn’t bothered if her sons Ziggy, 5, and Jagger, 3, see her naked. However, she has started shutting the door as they get older, but that hasn’t stopped them walking in when she is in the shower or getting dressed.
‘‘It is this natural progression as they get older. They are just more aware of their own body, that you have private parts that you might not want to show to everyone,’’ said Holdaway, who writes about parenting on Instagram and Patreon under the name Officially Em.
Alice, the mother of a 3-year-old son, is raising her son in a naturist lifestyle, so if the weather is nice, and they are at home, chances are they are both naked.
She hopes that the sight of her own body will give him an anchored understanding of what a real body looks like.
‘‘When he starts to see things in magazines, at least he would have seen natural naked bodies and not just on a magazine cover,’’ said Alice. ‘‘Naturists are less judgmental because you see people naked all the time.’’
Dakini, 49, and her partner Karl, 55, are also raising Dakini’s 13-year-old daughter in a naturist lifestyle. They are all naked together at home often and when they go to the naturist club they belong to, their daughter is naked with other adults and children.
‘‘I really like the fact we sleep naked and when our daughter comes in in the morning we have a little cuddle,’’ said Cooper, who is Estonian and grew up going to saunas naked with other children and adults. ‘‘It is part of life and it is nothing to be embarrassed or hidden.’’
Dakini and Karl have discussed how they can have healthy touch and boundaries as parents and naturists, especially between Karl and the daughter as she becomes a teenager.
‘‘I guess the big thing for me about naturism is being naked is not sexual,’’ said Karl, adding that at the moment, the daughter is more curious about his beard than any other part of his body.
The physical and psychological changes that puberty brings for a child can lead to increasingly private behaviour for a child when it comes to nudity, regardless of what the parents believe, according to Barry Kirker, a clinical psychologist based in South Auckland who works with victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse.
At age 5, kids start to develop an understanding that their body is their own and other people have their own body too. ‘‘We are quite naturally in tune with this sort of thing,’’ said Kirker.
Taking a too liberal approach to nudity between parents and children could increase the risk of something unintentionally happening or, in some cases, temptation.
And parents have a responsibility not to put their kids in compromising situations that could endanger them, Kirker said.
A society’s culture can impact how comfortable a parent is being naked around their child like Estonia’s nude sauna culture or topless beaches in Europe.
‘‘Those cultures are socialised to go to these beaches and saunas without acting out sexually,’’ said Kirker. ‘‘But you can’t socialise away people’s urges completely.’’
Ultra Strips Down, a TV show in Denmark, puts fully nude adults in front of an audience of children as young as 11. Its purpose is to show kids real bodies instead of the Photoshopped versions they might see in magazines.
The subject of nudity between child and parent is ambiguous and without a lot of research, said Nathan Wallis, a neuroscience educator. He recommends bouncing boundaries off a partner or other parents.
For example, Wallis thought it was perfectly normal to bathe with his 3-year-old daughter. His mother-in-law disagreed.
‘‘I had to take it on board because she is the grandmother,’’ he said. ‘‘I talked to other members of the family to see if I was by myself on that one or if she was by herself.’’
In the end, he decided that jumping in the bath with his kids at that age was fine.
Wallis, who is Ma¯ori, finds Pacific Island and Ma¯ori culture to be more conservative with baring skin, which could extend into parenting.
‘‘Ma¯ori and Pacific Islanders are much more likely to wear board shorts and T-shirts at the pool,’’ said Wallis, adding that he suspects a more conservative approach could come from the influence of Christianity in those communities.
It’s not certain how prevalent nudity was between parent and child in pre-colonial Ma¯ori society, said Clive Aspin, a public health researcher from the Victoria University of Wellington. The common depiction of male genitals in carvings hints at a more liberal approach. That was contrary to the conservative view of Christian missionaries who removed many of those carved genitals.
How your parents acted can also have an impact. Wishart, the mum from Wellington, falls somewhere between her mother’s relaxed approach to nudity and her father’s pious views.
‘‘I remember walking in on him in the bath and him having a heart attack while my mum would be on the phone in the living room just sitting there naked,’’ said Wishart. ‘‘I think she was still doing it when I was 13.’’
Wishart is already noticing a change with her older son at age 8. Before, he was comfortable to go with his mum into the women’s change room at their local pool.
Now, he wants to go to the male change rooms, which has his mum on edge about her son being with other adults in a place she can’t protect him.
‘‘You want to respect their independence, but you’re cautious as well,’’ she said.