The Naked Child Growing Up Without Shame/Social Nudity/Its Effect on Children [Paperback]

Dennis Craig Smith (Author), William Sparks (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 221 pages
• Publisher: Elysium Growth Pr (June 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555990010
• ISBN-13: 978-1555990015
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #875,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing and remarkable it hasn't been banned., May 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Naked Child Growing Up Without Shame/Social Nudity/Its Effect on Children (Paperback)

This book was published before the Terror and contains beautiful, uncensored text and photos. There is no similar work available in English on the important subject of nudity and shame. While not as scholarly as Hans Peter Duerr's "Nudity and Shame: the myth of the civilizing process" (in German), this book offers welcome balance to the mass hysteria over child sexuality in the U.S. The fanatics haven't yet targeted this book for burning so read it before books like this are silenced forever.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy, enjoyable read; serious consideration given, January 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Naked Child Growing Up Without Shame/Social Nudity/Its Effect on Children (Paperback)

From the preface (which I think is very well written):

"Does exposure to nudity cause sexual hang-ups in children? Will an open physical environment have negative effects on the personalities and sexual development of young people? Will seeing their parents nude cause children to develop what some experts call an over-balanced attachment to mother and father, and seduction anxiety? Or, as other experts believe, will nude experiences in the physically open family inevitably lead to incest, create terrible guilts and frustrations, and arouse parent-child rivalries? Will the children in families where nudity is common be the victims of more school failures and posess more sexual obsessions than those reared in families where nudity is not allowed? [...]

"[This] is the report on a study which addresses the questions listed above and gives the reader a chance to compare the opinions of the experts with the real-life experiences of adults who grew up in open physical environments. This book is the result of five years of research and writing plus added years for follow-up on some of the cases. _Growing Up Without Shame_ represents the first systematic attempt at studying the effects of a physically open environment. We know this study is the first. We hope it is not the last."

I found this book an easy, enjoyable read; it appears to give serious consideration to the topic, reviewing experts' opinions and researching the views of people who grew up in open environments. A more technical examination of the data from the research is given in an appendix.

Also contains a number of b&w photos from nudist environments, although these photos seem purely to brighten up the pages, since they have no direct connection to the text where they are placed.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very thorough and valuable book for parents, families..., March 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Naked Child: Growing Up Without Shame (Hardcover)

The Naked Child: Growing Up Without Shame is a wonderful reference for nudist families and parents, and those who are interested in the subjects of nudity and its effects on children's development. The authors present a lot of academic research study summaries to support their conclusions, and also include a number of anecdotal interviews. I feel that, at times, the anecdotal material is kind of contrived, but, overall, it gives the conclusions drawn (namely, that children's exposure to social nudity is not only not harmful, but is generally beneficial) a more "personal" ring to them. I've owned this book for many years, and I still frequently use it when compiling research on the topic myself.