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Do you never do things like bath with your children when they're young? Or do you always wear bathing suits even at home? I have to admit I find the attitude genuinely puzzling, I don't want to make fun of you, I just don't even get how you manage to avoid them seeing nudity until a certain age. Many children's books here include nude people. If anything, there is the problem that older kids are more likely to associate nudity with sex so you show less nudity around them, while with small children your main problem will be that they think pulling or pinching your penis is funny when they see your reaction.
Never! That sounds bizarre to me. Definitely taboo. Fully grown penises should not be floating next to toddlers.
You can be nude around a baby, but once they're smart enough to start talking you treat them like other people. Do you walk around nude in public? Maybe you do, but that isn't done here. With our oldest I remember the day that my wife scolded me for letting our toddler see me on the toilet. She was about 2 years old, I think.
An important piece of context that might be missing is that gender really matters. My wife can be naked around our young daughters, that's not taboo. If we had young sons I could be naked around them, though it's not something you'd do casually. But in my America little girls shouldn't be looking at adult penises. It's taboo.
Ha, I guess the only constant is that we all get scolded by our wifes. I just want to sit on the toilet in peace, but both her and our daughter constantly come in for various reasons and if I complain I'm scolded for being silly, it's not like there's anything they haven't seen a million times before!
Come on, "we treat our children like adult strangers" is hardly a generalising conservative principle, if anything it's usually progressives that are often criticised for that. I'm also neither changing the diapers of other people nor am I scolding them for improper manners and in general I will keep my distance, both emotionally and physically. Intra-family behaviour is just something else entirely from public behaviour. Also, we have public nude beaches here, although they are fringe they also aren't looked down upon, so I guess our culture in general is more comfortable with nudity and less sexualised.
Oh I don't think any of this is a generalized conservative principle. I'm not saying this is how it should be, just how it is in conservative American culture. At least, my corner of it. I'm describing, not prescribing.
That referred to the "Do you walk around nude in public?". No, and I do not consider my behaviour around strangers to have much bearing on how I behave around family.
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That was more from pre-emptively avoiding answering questions that I was not sure to answer but when I was bathing with 2 year old sister (making mini-water park in bathroom) I was wearing bathing suit (I was 18 years old at that time).
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