Naturism, our daughter, and raising children (Patreon)

On Saturday 6th September, the latest episode of British Naturism's Women in Focus podcast, hosted by Helen, dropped. The main guest on this episode is my daugher (so Helen's step-daughter), Lizzie. She is in her early 20's now, but has been around nudity and naturism her whole life, and Helen wanted to interview her as she has grown up with an apparent immunity to the pressures of social media and the impossible beauty standards it constantly conveys. If you want to hear what a young, Gen-Z woman has to say, listen to Episode 22 now.

The interview was so inspiring to me that I came back to and finished an essay I'd been working on for a while. It has now been published as an article by the International Naturist Federation on their blog, to coincide with the release of Lizzie's podcast episode.

In "Why We're Protecting Children From the Wrong Things", I wanted to shine light on a contradiction that I've been aware of for years. So many kids hate their bodies now, and yet society launches moral panic campaigns against the prospect of children seeing nudity, falsely thinking it must be sexual, and not realising the harm that they're actually doing.

So I've used academic research and UK government statistics, together with Helen's and Lizzie's personal experiences, to demonstrate how we're actually shielding children from activities that research shows are beneficial whilst allowing them to be exposed to documented psychological harm.

Helen's interview with my confident, social-media-resistant daughter validated everything my previous research predicted. So I'm calling for child protection policies grounded in actual criminology research, rather than cultural anxiety, because our children deserve proper, evidence-based protection irrespective of what the pearl-clutchers say.