‘My husband always showers with his underpants on’
Image: Shutterstock
If you raised your son freely, he suddenly becomes a prude when he is seven. Lizzy Janssen (42) once asked around and found out that people think differently about nude than a decade or so ago.
After three days of summer camp, my seven-year-old son Mason returns with a sleeping bag, air mattress and dirty laundry. But when I check his trolley for wet towels and underwear, all I find is one scrunched-up pair of pyjamas and a pair of mud-stained jeans. Everything else is in it exactly as I put it in, including the obligatory beach towels and clean underpants. When I ask Mason for an explanation, he casually says, “Oh, no shower.” And yes, he’s wearing the exact same underwear he left in Monday morning. The reason comes only after some insistence and has to do with shame. For his naked body. There was one shower in each six-person bedroom, without a door. You don’t think he stood in there when his classmates could see his bare bottom, do you? Besides, nobody did.
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Raised freely
I’m flabbergasted. Shame? I thought I raised our son free. In the house we all just walk from bed to bathroom completely naked. Mason often wants to take a bath with me and in swimming paradises we share a changing cubicle. We just don’t care about (functional) nudity. With the well-known restrictions of course: your body is yours, we don’t pull our pants and square public down, ‘private parts’ we keep it private and apart from doctors and parents, nobody touches your pee.
Previously, Mason never made a fuss about his naked body. When he was still going for his swimming certificates, I had to stop him from taking off his Ninjago swimsuit every time all the kids showered afterwards. And he preferred to jump naked through the locker room, so I had to run after him to dry him off. What the hell had happened in that one year?
‘Normal’ and ‘weird’ naked
Nothing crazy, as it turns out when I check with the other mothers in his class. I hear no one dared go naked among the girls either. Apparently around the age of seven the line between ‘normal’ and ‘weird’ is exposed. As I look around further, I also discover a new kind of prudishness among children. In my environment, the overall image of nudity is that you should keep it hidden. On the soccer team of Mason’s best friend Jonathan, all the boys shower together after the game, wearing underpants. His mother Marije always has to give him an extra slip in which he can take a shower. Seems to be a cultural thing, but one that has quickly become common in the Netherlands.
What a contrast to my own childhood in the eighties. I don’t remember anyone taking a bikini shower after the gym. My flower power mother was topless and we regularly went to the sauna with our family, when there were no swimwear days yet. When we went to the beach or pool in the summer, I took off my dress and put on a bikini top. After all, it was more striking to garishly fumble with towels than to be exposed for a nanosecond, my mother used to say.
Phones with camera function
Yet I have never done the latter with my child. I wrap Mason in large bath capes and then quickly swap his underpants for his Speedo. That has not so much to do with the new prudishness, but more with scary stories in the media about pedophiles and mobile phones with camera functions. I’m terrified that someone shoots him and does scary things with those photos.
Partly because of these developments, my husband and I have chosen to create a clear dividing line regarding nudity. I am naked in the shower, but my husband always showers with his underpants on. In the morning it is very hectic with us. Our upstairs toilet is in the bathroom and the teenagers want to use the sink and mirror at the same time. Our toddler also likes to shower with daddy, and my husband doesn’t want to be naked. Even if it’s their father, they don’t have to face his nakedness. We see that as a kind of privacy that we violate from them. It should be their own choice to want to see someone of the opposite sex naked. My husband also does not like to show his genitals to his three daughters. It doesn’t feel right to him. Conversely, the eldest two do not like to be naked near their father. That understanding is back and forth and it is respected. So despite our free upbringing, this part is deliberately not free.”
Martine (45), mother of three daughters aged 22, 16 and 4, shares the same fear.
“Shaming, sexting, pedophilia: hallelujah, what kind of world are my girls living in right now? I always answer freely and openly to all questions my daughters have, also in the sexual and physical area. When the oldest was little, I had no problem with anything. From a sort of ideal of equality, I even thought being naked was a must. But times changed. You have to be very careful what you do and don’t share with others. At first I didn’t want to see the dangers, I refused to live in a narrow society. But I had to change with it. Now we raise our girls resilient and teach them that they are in charge of their own bodies. They decide what they do or do not want to share. The same goes for the youngest of four.
“When should the lock be on the door?”
Yara (38), mother of a 7-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter, wonders at what age nude can still be seen.
“What else is done in the case of a non-biological parent? I have had a boyfriend, Michel, for three years. We live together and he raises my children as if they were his own flesh and blood. The children cuddle and play with him and call him ‘daddy’. They are very fond of Michel and have no embarrassment whatsoever with him.” Without really discussing this in detail beforehand, Yara and Michel have set a number of limits. He does not wipe the buttocks, nor will he dry the children or rub their bodies with body lotion. “But Michel is in the shower himself in Adam’s costume while the children are brushing their teeth and sometimes he comes across a child at night while urinating. I have a lot of doubts about what is still okay. When should the lock on the bathroom door be? At what point should my friend start covering up?”
The line between what is still appropriate and what is not is a tricky one. While watching the movie, my son Mason likes to snuggle against me and then lay his head on my breasts. Or he strokes my cleavage. He finds a lovely soft pillow. I have no problem with it. It would be different if he wanted to touch my nipples, that’s going too far for me. But he doesn’t care about that. Not even on my naked body. He doesn’t see it or doesn’t seem to really see it, while we regularly bathe together. He puts the subject aside, save for the one comment he made once, pointing to my pubic hair: “Hey mama, I’ve got hairs all over my legs and you there!”
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“What, are you in the bath with your child?” †
Privacy
Astrid (28), mother of a 9-year-old son and three daughters aged 7, 3 and 2, is very clear: they don’t do naked at home.
“We are not prudes, but my husband and I do not walk uncovered in front of the children. We teach our children from the age of two that their bottom is theirs alone and that only when changing is someone allowed to see and clean their buttocks. And that they should always say no if someone wants to touch their pee. Our children can therefore decide for themselves whether or not they want to be naked with someone else. Sometimes our eldest daughter does want to take a bath with her sisters, other times she prefers not. If their brother wants to join, he puts on his boxers. Our son hasn’t wanted anyone to see his naked ass since he was five, not even me. That’s fine. I don’t shower with the kids either. I also like my privacy.”
Don’t impose anything
For friend Marije (32) it is simple: she follows the boundaries and wishes of her children. When all the boys on Jonathan’s soccer team shower in underpants, he’s not going to be the naked hero there all by himself.
“I’m pretty neutral about naked. I don’t impose anything, but I don’t forbid it either. Now I can still help him with washing his hair, but if he wants to lock the bathroom door later, I will do that. He’s just eight and it’s all still pretty innocent. Although he is increasingly concerned with the differences between boy and girl bodies. The other day he was sitting on the couch with his legs splayed, sweatpants halfway through: ‘Look mom, how nice, that’s how my pee gets hard.’ I then explained to him that this is something for in bed. Not something he is allowed to do in the living room with visitors or at other people’s homes. I want to be normal about being naked, but with limitations.”
“Do you have a penis too?”
Ah yes, dicks. A favorite theme especially among boys. Colleague Marion (35) knows all about it.
“My son Maarten, just four, found everything with the word penis in it just as funny and the fact extremely interesting. He went to everyone in family and circle of acquaintances: does Aunt Truus have a penis? And neighbor Hank? Grandma sometimes? I had to regularly stop him from talking about genitals all the time, but I remembered: it’s just a phase. Don’t pay too much attention to it, it will blow over in no time.
At the same time, Maarten played an afternoon with my in-laws. When I came to pick up my son, my mother-in-law laughed and told them how much fun they had had with Maarten. He wanted to know if Grandpa also had a penis. ‘Sure,’ my father-in-law had said, then lowered his pants so that Maarten could take a closer look at a large man’s penis. I was shocked. Too stunned to say anything about it, though I regret it now. I actually wanted to say that I really don’t want to. My husband wasn’t even surprised when I told him later. Typical of his parents.”
Mother Nature
Nathalie (31) also finds naked something completely natural. Last year she became a naturist.
“I think it’s fantastic, but somewhere in the south of France, on a luxury campsite. Wonderfully casual and free. You get up, brush your teeth and you’re done. No clothes lying around, just your own cloth to sit on. Anyway: who wants to wear clothes with 45 degrees?” In the beginning, Nathalie said she behaved like a missionary, she continued to tell others how nice and enjoyable it is at a naturist campsite. “My friend tempered that. He thought I shouldn’t tell everyone blindly, some people find naked recreation a bit strange. While I just want to emphasize how natural it is. From professor to catering tiger: everyone is relaxed and people have real bodies, from very young to very old. Photoshop does not exist.”
Certainly an important life lesson for their daughter. Only she took it a little less well. “We had prepared our then five-year-old daughter well for our experiment beforehand: ‘We are going to a campsite and everyone is walking around bare buttocks. Nice right?’ “Yes,” she nodded. Until we arrived at our destination. We had barely entered the campsite when she started pointing and screaming: ‘Woah, that gentleman has bare buttocks!’ It really took a few days for her to stop laughing and get used to all the nakedness around her.”
This article is in Kek Mama 03-2020.
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