Why I Let My Kids See Me Naked

Melissa Uchiyama, writing for Brain, Child:

The majority of my friends’ children have never seen their parents naked. It is not part of the family culture. Kids may scamper diaper-less. Mommy may giggle at their talk of penises or “willies.” But most moms and dads will never be naked with them.

I see this as a major reason why western culture has such big issues with body image. Parents foster this notion that the naked body is something to be ashamed of which only increases self doubt about one’s body when faced with impossible bodies in media advertising.

I moved to Japan from America seven years ago, before I had kids. I learned about ‘onsens’, the public mineral baths. Here Japanese children grow up scrubbing their mother’s backs, walking from bath to bath, or showers to bath, with all manners of women. Girls see teenagers, mothers, grandmothers, all bodies with their different needs and ages, all bodies washed and soaked. There isn’t shame.

This is the sort of cultural change we need in western societies, to find a way to celebrate that all bodies are different, that there is nothing to be shameful of.

Children have their whole lives to access the multitude of widespread sexual images and beliefs out in the world. But this childhood with mommy and daddy, in a healthy, nurturing context, is the foundation I want for my family, a kind of bedrock of beauty and appreciation of the human body. Let’s not bring a shameful, sexualized belief into the home which doesn’t belong. Let’s not usher our little kids out of childhood before they are ready or developed for the things of young adulthood.