[net.rec.nude] Children and Social Nudity Revisited

pvl@houxh.UUCP (08/12/83)

  I was suddenly struck that the question of child/parent nude
interaction may be related to the social nudity question in an
different way than I had assumed.  A few more thoughts on the subject
follow.
  The studies and expert opinions are really mostly geared to the
subject of casual nudity in the *family*.  WARNING: the following
discussion is logic (as opposed to data) based so is subject to the
same questions as the logic of the experts.  END WARNING.  I can
convince myself that family nudity would be more potentially damaging
when practiced in isolation as opposed to making it a part of general
social nudity.  If nudity is observed *only* in the family, it could
give rise to problems more readily than if social nudity is included
in family activities so that there would be nothing special about
observing parents/siblings nude per se.
  What about it?  Am I rationalizing since I like social nudity?
For what it's worth, I was raised in a family where family nudity
was casual, but social nudity was never even considered.  How about
others on the net?
   Pete LaMaster NJ

laura@utcsstat.UUCP (08/13/83)

The world is a strange place, with funny rules. Children seem to
understand this rather well. Nudity was not practiced in our house
but I had to learn that no pressing religious question was important
enough to be mentioned in front of non-immediate relatives. (My
parents have different faiths, and that is a good way to start a
small war).  In the same way, I learned that evoltionary theory
was not to be mentioned in the school I was attending (I mentioned
it anyway, all the time, but I *knew* that it was frowned upon),
and that on the whole, the world was a pretty queer place. I
see no reason why public attitudes towards nudity should be any
different.

For me the bottom line is that I know no evidence that the anti-nudes
are correct in their fear of nudity. Sweden doesnt seem to be falling apart
due to moral decay, for instance. Everyone has got to learn what to
do when public opinion is WRONG sometime. If you believe that nudity
is not wrong, but still prevent your children from being nudists, you
are in effect saying that one must bend to public opinion, even when it
is wrong. I would not want to encourage this in my children.

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura

ps - in net.politics a discussion is raging entitled 'Societal
consensus as a basis for law'. I am rather vocal in saying that it
is NOT. If you want to discuss this question, and do not read
net.politics, please move the discussion there so that there
is less duplication of effort. I am already holding down net.flame
and net.politics and may have to move to net.philosophy as well,
but this is about my limit.		laura

kent@decwrl.UUCP (Chris Kent) (08/19/83)

I was raised in a family where casual nudity was the norm, and social
nudity wasn't practiced -- not that it was frowned upon, we just never
did. Had the occasion arisen, I'm sure we would have.

I found that it didn't take me long to learn from my peers that what
we practiced at home was different; I learned to shut up about it, and
just pitied them -- I thought their setup was weird; they probably thought
the same of me (all this during thos important (?) years of 9-13).

I fully intend to raise my child(ren) (whenever I have some) the same way
I was raised. I would tend to agree that being on a clothed beach is
usually more arousing than on a nude beach, exactly because the mystery
is gone. It would seem to me that most women have learned that what
a garment covers can be more arousing than what it reveals (this from a
decidedly male observer -- it holds true for me, at least).

The viewpoints you quoted (Spock, Brothers, et al) were, to my mind, 
singularly North American. I don't think you'd find any Middle European
child psychologists spouting such nonsense, and it seems much healthier
to me.

Cheers,
Chris Kent