On Facebook this past week, I saw a photo that had gotten taken down due to nudity (although if you see the cover photo there, more is covered up in that photo than in most profile pictures...). Apparently the internet exploded, stating that the father had crossed the line by showering with his son, both of them nude. It has sparked a lively internet discussion about whether or not parents should be nude around their children, or if every instance of nudity should be considered abuse.
Now, if you don't know the background of this photo, apparently this man's son was incredibly ill. He was feverish, throwing up and had diarrhea. And you can tell he's young—it must have been incredibly difficult for his parents to handle. So the man did what probably any father would do. He took his son into the shower to help with the fever, and let the child vomit and have diarrhea there so that it could just wash off of both of them. It was clearly not an abusive moment. The mother actually took a photo of this because she found it so touching.
But the internet, being the internet, freaked out. So the question being proposed now is: is it OK for parents to be nude in front of their children?
My opinion is that it's completely fine. Yes, there is a line. Abuse is not OK, in any respect. But I think that hiding one's body sends a completely wrong message to a child. And obviously as they grow older, it becomes less acceptable to show those areas to them, but if they're just little kids... who cares? It's not abuse if you aren't abusing them.
I didn't grow up in a household of adults that walked around in the nude, but I don't think we really hid our bodies until I was older and could understand it more. And in the case of the photo in question, I'm not sure how anyone could see it as abusive—the father was literally allowing his son to defecate and vomit on him, and was holding him in the shower to bring down his fever. Thinking about his own nudity probably wasn't high up there on the list of things to worry about.
Plus, we need to teach kids not to be ashamed of their bodies. Kids mirror their parents, and if they are hiding their bodies in such a way that it comes off as shameful, kids are going to pick up on it. And if your child is sick, the state of your child should be the most important thing on your mind. I think it's pretty obvious that this father loved his son in all the right ways, and cared about him more than anything else.
So while I do believe some discretion should be used as children get older, I don't think we have to hide our bodies from our children. And I think the internet just needs to calm down about this photo. There are way more important things to worry about in this world.
