Many couples, especially among the working class, never see
each other's bodies until one of them dresses the other's corpse.
A peasant woman I knew was a witness in a court case of ex-
hibitionism. She was genuinely shocked. "Come, come, Jean,"
I chided her. "Why, you've had seven children."
"Mr. Neill," she said solemnly, "I never saw John's . . . I
never saw my man naked all my married life."

Nakedness should never be discouraged. The baby should
see its parents naked from the beginning. However, the child
should be told when he is ready to understand that some people
don't like to see children naked and that, in the presence of
such people, he should wear clothes.

There was the woman who complained because our daugh-
ter bathed in the sea au naturel. At the time, Zoë was one year
old. This matter of bathing tersely sums up the whole anti-life
attitude of society. We all know the irritation arising from try-
ing to undress on the beach without exposing our so-called pri-
vate parts. Parents of self-regulated, free children know the
difficulty of explaining to a child of three or four why he must
wear a bathing suit in a public place.

The very fact that the law does not permit exposure of the
sex organs is bound to give children a warped attitude toward
the human body. I have gone nude myself, or encouraged one
of the women on the staff to do so, in order to satisfy the curios-
ity of a small child who had a sense of sin about nakedness. On
the other hand, any attempt to force nudism on children is
wrong. They live in a clothed civilization, and nudism remains
something that the law does not permit.

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