It’s a tale as old as time: Some houses are naked houses and some houses just aren’t. The real trouble arises when the two parents living in the house don’t agree on having a naked house or not.
This is the issue for one mom on Reddit, who turned to the site’s parenting subgroup with her issue. Basically, her husband hates when their kids are running around naked, and she wants to know if that’s weird (or if she’s weird).
“My husband has always been bothered by our kids being naked,” she begins. “For example, if my 4 yo daughter gets out of the shower and is running around naked, he will get angry at her and tell her to go put some clothes on.”
Is he overreacting, or is this normal dad behavior?
“To me, nudity is not a big deal at all for kids,” she continues. “They could be naked all day at home/in the backyard and it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. I never bat an eye even seeing a child naked in public for whatever reason. I also grew up like that, and his family was much more modest.”
Ah — she has a Naked House history and he does not!
“This is a reoccurring argument between us and I just need to know if it’s weird,” she concludes. “I feel like he has childhood trauma that’s behind this, he gets so triggered and it seems so irrational to me. Then he thinks it’s very weird that I find it odd that he’s bothered by it. Help!”
In other words, she wants to know if they are just having a Naked House disconnect or if he’s being over the top by actually getting angry about nakedness.
People in the comments had lots of thoughts.
One one hand, many people thought that they simply come from two different worlds and that both of them have normal views about nakedness.
“Some families are comfortable with nudity, others are not. Some families are mixed,” reads the most popular comment. “My hippy mom used to garden in the buff to get an even tan line. My husband claims to have never seen his mom’s knees.”
Many others made a point that it’s not about modesty, it’s about cleanliness.
“It’s unsanitary af,” wrote one parent, to a lot of agreement. “I don’t want to have to question whether a bare butt has been on my pillow that day when I go to bed.”
One person made an important distinction: Whether or not you’re okay with nudity in your house, you shouldn’t add an element of shame to the discussion.
“A dad here. imho it’s OK to be nude at home — within reason,” one parent wrote. “…But we never yelled. Never put a stigma on it. We’re here to teach and help — not yell and berate.”
“It can teach kids to be ashamed of their bodies if you get weird about it,” another mom wrote.
Good point!
A few people even had some good ideas of what to actually do to solve this family’s problem.
“Yeah there is a wide range of normal in this space,” one person wrote. “Personally I think finding a compromise rule (like allowing 20 minutes of naked time post-bath or allowing nakedness in bedrooms) is the best way to go when parents have different approaches.”
“Maybe he’s just super modest and bothered by nudity,” another person suggested. “It doesn’t have to be anything more than this. Instead of arguing try a different approach that doesn’t attack his need for modesty but compromises a solution. It might sound like: ‘I know it bothers you when the kids run around the house naked. I think it’s okay if the kids are naked but what if they stay in their room?’ And then help enforce the compromise you make. This also gives your husband a tool to just say ‘room!’ Whenever they wanna run around naked.”
These both seem like reasonable ways forward!
It seems clear that neither parent here is “weird” — they just have different feelings about nudity that fall on different places in the range of normal. To get past the fighting, it feels like the dad needs to let go of his emotional reaction to nakedness and they should both find a way to compromise. Here’s to the Semi-Naked Houses!
This article was originally published on scarymommy.com.