Nudity and children

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Attitudes toward the nudity of children vary substantially, depending on the child's culture, age and the context of the nudity.

Contents 1 General attitudes 1.1 Non-western cultures 2 Nudity in physical education 2.1 In the United States 2.2 In Europe 3 Quotes 4 References 5 Further reading 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] General attitudes

Many parents believe nudity is both physically and emotionally healthy for children. Web columnist Stacy DeBroff suggests that nudity in very young children also helps with toilet training^[1].

Exposure that would be forbidden in public is often allowed or even encouraged in familiar circles, amongst peers of the same sex, and/or with relatives or educators.

Whether depiction of child nudity is considered inappropriate varies; see also Nudity in art.

There have been incidents in which snapshots taken by parents of their infant or toddler children bathing or otherwise naked were destroyed or turned over to law enforcement as child pornography. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Non-western cultures

See also main article Nudity for more information.

In various cultures children can go publicly naked (fully or strategically) while adults don't, usually till an age or ceremony considered the start of adolescence or of adulthood. An example of a rite of passage in a Benin tribe, traditional body scarification on the head is performed on a small child while completely naked, but a boy being initiated as an adult bares only the torso (where the scars are made).

Attitudes toward nudity vary greatly within East Asia: China and North Korea tend toward the conservative side, while Japan and Hong Kong are more liberal. In Japan, nudity is still the norm in public baths and pool showers, and outdoor hot spring baths in particular were mixed gender until the Meiji period. Over the last century, this has slowly been changing with most public baths in large cities now offering seperate baths for men and women or requiring the use of swimsuits. It is also common for young children to join a parent of the opposite gender in a public bath, or to wander around naked while changing at the beach. Co-ed baths persist in the countryside, but there has been a slow movement to sex-segregated baths as Japan urbanizes. Sumo wrestlers and the participants at Shinto nude festivals wear Fundoshi, a loin cloth which exposes the buttocks.

Despite the relative prevalence of traditional attitudes for adults in China, however, children continue to wear open shorts, permitting them to more easily relieve themselves. In the preparations for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, some have called for the end of the traditional permissiveness for adult males to go shirtless in public during warm weather.

[edit] Nudity in physical education

[edit] In the United States

In the United States, public school students historically have been required to shower communally with classmates of the same gender after physical education class. In the United States, public objections and the threat of lawsuits have caused a number of school districts in recent years to choose to make showers optional for students ^[2]. However, many^{[citation needed]} US secondary ^[3] and elementary ^[4] schools continue to require all students to shower as part of their school's required physical education curriculum.

Several popular television sitcoms ^{[5] [6]}, as well as children's books ^[7], have portrayed the embarrassment sometimes caused by compulsory communal showering in a humorous light. Still, many students find the adjustment to school showers to be quite uncomfortable, and some teachers and parents attempt to be understanding while enforcing this often unpopular policy. ^{[8] [9] [10]}

The US courts have held that all students, not just student athletes, also have a reduced expectation of personal privacy. All students participate in "communal undress" in the required physical education classes ^[11]. Notably, a majority of traditionalists who favor continuing required school showers are not known to favor nudity outside this limited situation. Despite this precedent, most schools and teachers prefer to encourage rather than require showers for economic reasons (lack of towels or facilities) and/or concerns over potential parental complaints.

For religious reasons, many Muslim parents strongly object to communal school showers and demand privacy partitions ^[12]. Other parents have raised objections that the inclusion of compulsory showers in the physical education curriculum conflicts with the privacy beliefs of their families. An increasing number of schools have responded to these complaints by allowing students to shower in swimsuits or by constructing some secluded showers to allow a privacy option for any student who so chooses.

Other school boards, however, have still resolutely declined to provide options for privacy accommodations during PE showers. Four common reasons are used by these schools to justify requiring communal showers as part of the physical education curriculum:

• Some public schools believe that all students should learn to feel comfortable entering open dressing and showering environments ^[13], and part of the school's mission is to educate the entire child ^[14].

• Budgetary and logistical constraints often make privacy options too expensive ^[15] to be managed with available time and funds. Other schools have argued that since adding privacy accommodations involves spending substantial tax money simply to meet the belief systems of particular religious groups, that public schools are prohibited by the establishment clause from making these changes ^[16].

• A small percentage of students have always objected to communal showers; however, after the first few days of school showers, these students very frequently overcame the initial embarrassment and were fine ^[17]. In most cases, the objections to school showers are actually from the student's parents, while the student in question does not object to having to take showers ^[18].

• Students within the school environment have less expectation of privacy than members of the population generally ^[19]. It is socially acceptable in the United States to be nude in the company of others of the same gender. Requiring school showers within the boundaries of social acceptance is not beyond reason. The fact that a student or a student's parents may be religiously or morally opposed to an open locker room environment does not make that activity socially unacceptable, and schools do not change policy to each student's personal comfort level.

Compulsory communal showering remains a controversial subject for many worldwide. However, throughout much of the world, students in physical education classes undress and shower together on a daily basis. For better or for worse, school showers have been most youths' introduction into communal nudity.

[edit] In Europe

Europeans have generally been more insistent that all students shower communally ^[20].

The relation to nudity varies substantially within Europe, with Scandinavia in the north being the most open to it, and Italy in the south being much more reserved. Children in Scandinavia are very likely to grow up with a relaxed attitude to adult nudity, and activities such as sharing baths, saunas and bathrooms with parents and siblings are common. Communal bathing before and after sports activities in public and private places is therefore common and may even occasionally be mixed. Generally, public places are required to provide a same gender changing area.

Finland, further north, is well known for its long traditions of mixed gender sauna and hot baths.

In Austria, Germany and the Netherlands the general approach to nudity is relaxed, though not everywhere. Certain Catholic communities may represent a much stricter approach to public nudity than the Protestant communities. Commonly bathing in schools and after sports activities does though remain the rule.

In southern Europe, notably in Italy the approach is different. It is very unlikely that children will ever have seen their parents nude. Approaches to nudity can vary within each country. People in northern Germany are more open to nudity and nudism than people in southern Germany; and northern Italians are more relaxed about nudity between parents and their children than Italians from the south.

[edit] Quotes

• "Yet, the truth is that nudity in the home, when handled in a respectful, matter-of-fact way, is perfectly natural and certainly not harmful." --Dennis Sugrue, PhD, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School in Sex Matters for Women (Guilford Press, 2002)

• "In fact, research suggests that children who have seen their parents nude do not grow up to be emotionally scarred, but instead are more likely to be accepting of their own bodies and comfortable with their own sexuality." Holly Robinson, HealthyKids.com

• "The fear that seeing naked people in some way harms children is not supported, however, by academic research. The small handful of studies on this topic in psychology and sociology have shown, instead, that children reared in an atmosphere containing family social nudity may benefit from the practice. If this is true, then proposed laws outlawing either social nudity in the home or children's participation at naturist (or nudist) settings are unjustified." --Mark Storey in Children, Social Nudity and Scholarly Study

• "A child who has never been allowed to see his parents and brothers and sisters naked sees nudity as something shocking. — Dr. Helga Fleishhauer Hardt, SHOW ME New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975

• "Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity." — Dr. Lee Salk, Psychiatrist, from an article in McCall's Magazine, June, 1976

• "Ideally, parents will unostentatiously allow their children to become acquainted, from infancy on, with the nude appearance of family members, juvenile and adult, in the normal course of dressing, undressing, and bathing." — Margaret Mead

• "[Recreational facilities where clothing is optional] provide an ideal environment for families whose policy is to give their children a healthy regard for the body and a chance at normal, wholesome psychosexual development. — John Money, Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

• "When I grow up I'm going to be a nudist. People would get along better if they didn't wear any clothes. Then they couldn't pretend to be what they're not." — Judy Blume, It's Not the End of the World

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• The Naked Child Growing Up Without Shame/Social Nudity/Its Effect on Children by Dennis Craig Smith, William Sparks. Elysium Growth Pr, ISBN 1555990010.
• Storey, Mark Children, Social Nudity and Academic Research Nude & Natural magazine, 23.4 Summer 2004.
• Storey, Mark Children, Social Nudity and Scholarly Study
• Storey, Mark "Dr. Spock and Family Nudity." Nude & Natural 18.3 (1999): 68-80.
• Story, Marilyn D. "Factors Associated with More Positive Body Self-Concepts in Preschool Children." Journal of Social Psychology 108.1 (1979): 49-56.

[edit] See also

• Issues in social nudity
• Nudity and sexuality
• Child sexuality
• Nudity in sport
• Public nudity

[edit] External links

• wikiHow: How to Practice Nudity in your Family
• iVillage: Nudity: Inappropriate in front of the kids? by Gayle Peterson, PhD
• St. Petersburg Times, Can't critic see camp is nude, but not lewd? By JAN GLIDEWELL Published June 22, 2003
• The Bi-College News: Protect the Children From All that Nudity: Nude Art and Young Minds By Jessie Post, October 10, 2006.