Children are not born with any shame about nudity. They learn to be ashamed of their own nudity. Clothing hides and therefore creates mystery and ignorance about natural body processes, such as pregnancy, adolescence, and aging. Children (and even adults) who grow up in a naturist environment have far less anxiety about these natural processes than those who are never exposed to them. Margaret Mead writes, "clothes separate us from our own bodies as well as from the bodies of others. The more society muffles the human body in clothes, camouflages pregnancy and hides breast feeding, the more individual and bizarre will be the child's attempts to understand, to piece together a very imperfect knowledge of the life-cycle of the two sexes and an understanding of the particular state of maturity of his or her body."

Clothing hides the natural diversity of human body shapes and sizes. When people are never exposed to nudity, they grow up with misunderstandings and unrealistic expectations about the body based on biased or misinformed sources, for instance, from advertising or mass media. Shame, with respect to nudity, is relative to individual situations and customs, not absolute. True naturists emphasize a decent, family atmosphere and morality. Research shows that children who grow up in a naturist setting tend to be more self-confident, more self-accepting, and more sexually well-adjusted. They feel better about their bodies, and more comfortable with their sexuality. In fact research found that naturist children had body self-concepts that were significantly more positive than those of non-naturist children and that the "nudity classification" of a family was one of the most significant factors associated with positive body self-concept.

Furthermore, naturist children showed a significantly higher acceptance of their bodies as a whole, rather than feeling ashamed of certain parts. A study by psychologists reported that "increased exposure to nudity in the family fosters an atmosphere of acceptance of sexuality and one's body." They concluded that children who had seen their parents nude were more comfortable with physical contact and affection, had higher self-esteem, and showed increased acceptance of and comfort with their bodies and their sexuality. Research also has found that individuals with less childhood exposure to parental nudity experienced significantly higher levels of adult sexual anxiety than did the group with more childhood exposure to parental nudity.

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