Family nudism

You can often hear that children should not see their parents naked, because, firstly, it is indecent, and secondly, it can lead to promiscuity, early onset of sexual activity and other troubles, up to incest tendencies. The supporters of this point of view are not embarrassed by the fact that for hundreds of years children and parents visited the bathhouse together, and no one considered it indecent. And the children from this in no way became promiscuous.
I must say that until recently there was no scientific evidence of how traumatic it is for the psyche of a child to see parents naked. And only in the 90s of our century, American scientists Lewis and Janda obtained the first results of research on this topic.

Here are the descriptions of these results given by William Masters and Virginia Johnson:
"Many experts have speculated about the possible negative consequences of parental exposure in the presence of a child or his sleeping in the same bed with them. However, until recently, these assumptions were based mainly not on facts, but on conclusions. The latest research aimed at elucidating the role of such experience in the formation of adult sexuality, shed light on this issue.
In 1988, Lewis and Janda (1988) conducted a written survey of 77 male and 133 female psychology students on childhood sexuality.

Respondents also had to answer questions about their current sexual relationships and behavior.
The study did not reveal evidence of a negative impact of the type of parental nudity on the formation of the sexuality of their children.

In contrast, boys who saw their parents naked were more likely to make physical contact and affection when they became young adults. If such an experience occurred between the ages of 6 and 11, the only consequence was a tendency to engage in casual sexual relations.

Little girls who watched their parents naked, becoming adults, were characterized by increased sexuality compared to their peers; They did not experience any difficulties in sexual intercourse. If girls saw the nakedness of their parents at the age of 6-11 years, then, like boys of this age, the only consequence was a tendency to early sexual intercourse, although the reliability of these data is questionable.

Boys who slept in the same bed with their parents before the age of 5 had higher self-esteem as adults, had more sexual intercourse, and had an increased propensity to have sexual intercourse compared to other men. Women who slept with their parents in early childhood experienced less discomfort with physical contact or intimacy compared to other women. Neither men nor women showed long-term adverse effects of sleeping in bed with their parents during childhood. Thus, those who claim that the joint sleep of children with parents can have undesirable consequences are sounding the alarm completely unreasonably.

The conclusions of the Lewis and Janda study cannot be considered conclusive, especially since the data obtained from student surveys may not be applicable to larger populations. However, this study opens the door to a future systematic study of child sexuality that has not yet been carried out."

Similar studies were carried out at a later time. Igor Semenovich Kon talks about one of them in his article "Can Children See Their Parents Naked": In a longitudinal study of family life styles, 200 boys and girls were systematically examined for 18 years, along with many other topics, the researchers recorded whether these children saw parental nudity and whether they happened to witness the so-called "primary scenes".

When the subjects reached the age of 17-18. this life experience was compared with a large set of psychological traits, including the nature of communication with parents and peers, the presence of antisocial behavior, the quality of sexual life, etc. It turned out that parental nudity in itself does not have any harmful effect on children. As for the "primary scenes", their influence depends on the sex of the child. In boys, this spectacle (experienced before the age of 6) correlates with a lower risk of contracting a venereal disease in youth or becoming the culprit of an unwanted pregnancy, while in girls this risk, on the contrary, increases.

Naturally, scientists do not draw any pedagogical conclusions, since the influence of any psychological event depends on many other individual characteristics of the child's development. For one, the kind of parental nudity is a dangerous sexual "temptation" and for another it is a way to satisfy a healthy curiosity, and this reaction largely depends on the general properties of the culture and its attitude towards nudity and sexuality. However, the study by Okami et al. once again reminds us that the psychoanalytic concept of "mental traumas" that was born in the framework of an anti-sexual Victorian culture, which are revealed only after a long time, requires a critical attitude.