Children Without Clothes: When Do They Need a Fig Leaf?
“I don’t want to see her naked and, frankly, I don’t want to see other kids running around naked either,” Mr. Louie said.
“I remember thinking, if there were more people around, and if they were Americans, would they accept him running naked as he was?”
In the United States, she continued: “I just don’t think it’s acceptable in popular culture.
Katarzyna Psujek, 38, an administrator at Tiffany & Company
and a mother of two sons who lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, said her son Sebastian, who turned 3 in May, often frolics at home naked and spent nearly an entire weekend naked last September at a rented house in upstate New York where the family celebrated a friend’s wedding with about 30 other overnight guests.
“If someone has what appears to be an overly strong reaction to seeing young children running around
naked, it tells us about their own hang-ups, their own inner conflicts,” Dr. Balter said.
“In the morning he gets up and takes his pajamas off,
and rather than get dressed right away, he walks around naked,” said Dawn Nicola, Alex’s mother, a stay-at-home parent in Castle Rock, Colo.
After school, he likes to take off his pants, recline on his stuffed animal chair
and watch an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants while snacking on cheese-flavored crackers.