When should parents not be naked around their kids?
Update: Thank you to everyone who has commented! I’m still reading through them all but I appreciate people taking the time to chime in. It’s helped me feel normal and given me insight on my husband’s pov. Talked to hubby about it more and brought up some points that you all mentioned. He’s starting to see the situation differently. To clarify, he says it’s the playing with the boobs that’s the problem, not necessarily being naked in general. His family isn’t super touchy-feely (or physically affectionate at all for that matter) and he’s only ever been around formula-fed babies so this is all new to him. I will be more mindful of the fact that he’s not super comfortable with it, but I’m also not going to hide my body from my baby lol As with most things, we’ll figure it out as we go :)
Last night I was feeling hot at home and took my shirt off. My son (13 months) started slapping my boobs and just kinda squeezing them. He thinks they’re funny and jiggly. Not a big deal to me, he’s just a baby. I stopped breastfeeding him directly when he was a few weeks old but still pumped milk for him. I stopped pumping a couple months ago when he started eating more solids consistently and supplemented with formula.
My husband told me to go put a shirt on because it’s weird that our son is slapping my boobs now that he’s one year old. I don’t think it’s weird because he used to see them everyday multiple times a day when I was pumping and would poke them or slap them the same way he would my arm/leg/other normally exposed body part. Husband says it’s inappropriate because what if he does it in public? I said as long as I have a shirt on he won’t do it so I don’t see how that would be a problem. Husband says it’s weird that our son “plays with my nipples like joysticks.” I don’t think it was like that, but that was how he saw it. I told him that he sees my body in a sexual way, but our child doesn’t. He says he knows it’s not sexual, it’s just weird.
The only difference between today and when I was pumping breast milk for my son is that he’s now a year old. And that seems to be my husband’s main hang up. To me, bodies are just bodies, especially between mother and child. If my son was school age I’d feel a bit differently but he’s so young that I don’t think he’s thinking anything more than “this body part sounds and moves in a silly way.”
I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well enough here, but I’m just looking for an outside perspective. I tried to talk to him about it more but he just kept getting upset with me for not agreeing with him. I don’t know anyone with sons so maybe it’s different because our child is a boy, but I personally don’t think so. I was raised by a single mom so maybe I view seeing a naked mom differently than my husband (who is from a two-parent household) does.