I posted this on another forum this morning. What are your thoughts?
I had what seems like a forward step with my wife and a step back with the kids teens. As I stated in my introduction my family tolerates my nudity. Monday evening at the dinner table my son said something about breast exposure of women being wrong (part of the step back). I began to question him on why he believes that, which prompted my daughter to leave the room (step back complete). Both of them know what I believe about the body being a gift of the Father and that it is not sinful but what we do in our minds that is where the sin emerges. Neither of my kids used to bat an eye at seeing me nude around the house now they tend to leave the room (Which is not necessarily a bad thing when they are arguing with each other, the arguing stops and they go into their own rooms.)
But, that conversation led to the one with my wife. (side note: I do not think she will ever join me nude outside the bedroom, but I will continue to pray for her.) In the conversation we talked about the kids and body shame and that I hope my conversations about the goodness of the human body and my example of nudity will counteract what they are learning socially. We talked about what she has read on the MCAG web site. We talked about how as a society that hides simple nudity but glorifies porn that we are teaching this generation of boys to see girls and women as objects for their personal pleasure.
We are teaching our girls that they need to do what ever and be whatever the boys like, thus being just an object or an orifice for the boys. We also talked about how she doesn't want our daughter to be a "floozy" or dress like one. That she doesn't want her to attract that kind of attention, and she said "neither do you". I said basically, A is a beautiful young girl and boys are interested in her no matter how much she puts on or takes off, but it is not her responsibility to police the boy's minds which is where sin is born. And, I will confront anyone who expresses those thought as I did with our oldest.
Now the step forward, we have talked about all this before but this time she said that she was sorry that she has not been more supportive and will try to be more supportive and not just tolerate in the future. I expressed my interest in making a benefits of nudity reference book, she thought it may be beneficial. Anyway, that is a big step forward for my wife.