“I Walked in on Them”: Young Adults’ Childhood Perceptions of Sex and Nudity in Family and Public Contexts

Abstract

Children’s observation of sex and nudity among parents, peers, or strangers has received limited scholarly attention, mostly because research on sexuality in childhood is difficult or prohibitive to conduct. To address this topic, we conducted a secondary data analysis of 57 human sexuality students’ narratives regarding the emotional and situational contexts of the first sexual image they recalled. We examined those narratives where participants reported that they saw was a “real person” either nude or engaged in sexual behavior. These participants reported viewing three kinds of sexual behavior or nudity: parental, other family members, and nonfamily. In examining participants’ immediate reactions and long-term reflections, we found that many participants, especially females, were confused or upset by what they saw, but few reported a lingering discomfort. Our results indicate that children would benefit from immediate, nurturant, and clarifying parental responses, particularly when children walk in on parents having sex.

Keywords

nudity qualitative methods sex education sexual images sexual behavior young adults

The elastic boundary between public and private spaces is at the heart of the issue of sex and nudity in family and public settings. On the one hand, explicit sexual imagery, such as overt sexual behavior and nudity that objectify and sexualize women’s bodies, is now ever-present in the mainstream media (Ward, 2016). At the same time, acknowledging sexual curiosity or behavior among youth is treated with ambiguity and suspicion because it challenges the idea that sexuality begins in adulthood rather than emerging gradually through childhood and adolescence. With the assumption of children being asexual, parents are often unprepared to discuss sexuality with them when questions arise or children are exposed to sexuality (Stone, Ingham, & Gibbins, 2013; Stone, Ingham, McGinn, & Bengry-Howell, 2017). When parents do answer children’s questions or address misconceptions, they often do so thinking they are being open and honest; however, they may not use anatomically correct language or they may answer in ways that confuse the child more (Martin & Torres, 2014; Stone et al., 2017). In this highly sexualized yet ambiguous environment about normative sexuality, few parents or professionals are prepared to openly address how sexuality topics relate to children (Josephs, 2015; Kaestle & Allen, 2011; Kellogg, 2010; Lamb & Plocha, 2014; McKee et al., 2010; Okami, 1995; Stone et al., 2017).

There is a robust literature on parental communication about sexual issues with adolescents and young adults (e.g., Beckett et al., 2010; Jerman & Constantine, 2010; Lefkowitz & Stoppa, 2006; Martin & Torres, 2014) and a growing literature on the importance of parents talking to very young children about sex and the challenges of doing so (e.g., McGinn, Stone, Ingham, & Bengry-Howell, 2016; Stone et al., 2013; Stone et al., 2017). However, very little is known about children observing “real people,” either nude or engaged in sexual behaviors, such as “walking in on” their parents having sex, or viewing parental, sibling, peer, or public nudity. These distinct yet also overlapping areas, that of viewing the nudity of a real person and/or viewing one’s parents having sex, are not topics that have warranted a great deal of scientific scrutiny (Lewis & Janda, 1988; Okami, Olmstead, Abramson, & Pendleton, 1998). One potentially related aspect of parental influence on childhood sexuality can be found in the literature of cosleeping, where children sleep in the same bed as parents (Okami, 1995; Stewart, 2017). In light of the relative silence about children seeing real people engaging in sexual behavior or even simply just seeing nude people, as well as the general reaction to these topics with discomfort or alarm rather than normalizing or contextualizing them (Lamb & Plocha, 2014; Okami, 1995; Stone et al., 2017), our goal in this study was to explore the rather taboo topic of children’s exposure to sex and nudity at home and in public contexts and ultimately address the diverse needs and interests of parents and professionals responsible for helping children become responsible sexual adults.

Guided by a critical feminist perspective, we used sensitizing concepts about sex, gender, and power to explore the tension between private and public experience as reflected through the recollections of young adults regarding a sexualized topic (Allen, Lavender-Stott, & Gary, 2017; Kaestle, 2016; Lamb & Plocha, 2014; Sprague, 2005). A feminist lens helped uncover the gendered differences of what participants perceived as a first sexual image. As a point of view, feminism deconstructs the nature of power and objectification that underlie sexualized images. For example, the notion that women’s bodies are often objectified, and that young men are socialized to view women’s nudity as sexual, is a starting point for how sexual images are interpreted, both at the individual and the societal level. A feminist framework is also useful in helping discern agentic sexual experiences from exploitive or repressive sexuality for both males and females (Allen & Henderson, 2017; Edwards, 2016; Lamb, 2010).

Literature Review

In a review of children’s exposure to familial or public sex and nudity based on research in the 1970s and 1980s, Okami (1995) contributed a rare examination of empirical evidence on a topic that is more often examined from practical, clinical, or anecdotal perspectives (Kellogg, 2010; Lewis & Janda, 1988; McKee et al., 2010; Wurtele & Kenny, 2011). Although scholarship has been concerned with formal sex education (or lack thereof), how parents talk (or do not talk) to youth about sexual issues, and exposure to sexual media, the content of what youth actually see in real life has not been given much attention. To understand the broader issues associated with this topic, we address the empirical evidence from the few quantitative and qualitative studies on issues related to sexuality in childhood and supplement our examination of this scholarship with a selection of professional and lay (parental) communications in online sources. Throughout this review, we highlight the need for much more systematic research on the topic of children’s exposure to familial or public sex and nudity.

Scholarship on Children’s Exposure to Sexual Behavior and Nudity

In the 1990s, Okami (1995) reported on the dearth of empirical investigation into topics such as childhood exposure to sex and nudity in the previous 20 years (the 1970s and 1980s). He also observed that there had been an increase in academic and professional concern about physical closeness and nudity between parents and children. For example, he claimed that behaviors that were once treated as innocuous or merely with ambiguity about their appropriateness are now subject to a heightened concern about these behaviors being explicitly abusive, either as emotional incest or subtle sexual abuse. Dealing specifically with some of the topics we address in the current study, Okami (1995) presented a review of the literature in which he investigated several discernable behaviors that have been constructed as problematic:

Exposure of the child to parental nudity; parent-child co-bathing or the parent bathing the child; “excessive” displays of physical affection . . . ; exposing a child thorough visual or auditory proximity to instances of adult sexual behavior [e.g., “the primal scene”]; and allowing a child to sleep in the parental bed. (p. 51)

In his examination of the limited research on these issues, he found that there was no indication that either parental nudity or exposure to parental sexual expression had any eventual psychological harm to children. The only behavior that had the potential of harm was sleeping in the parental bed, since it might lead to disrupted sleep. Okami (1995) did caution that because the empirical literature on these topics was so limited, perhaps these studies were not able to detect harm. On balance, he concluded that professionals, especially clinicians, should not automatically assume that these behaviors constitute a type of subtle or overt harm.

The few others who have addressed family nudity have focused on topics such as the likelihood that children will display sexual behaviors (Friedrich, Grambsch, Broughton, Kuiper, & Beilke, 1991; Friedrich, Sandfort, Oostveen, & Cohen-Kettenis, 2000). Using a sample of 880 nonabused children aged 2 to 12 years, Friedrich et al. (1991) found that children from families in which nudity is more common, such as families in which children bathe with adults or otherwise see adults nude, are more likely to exhibit a range of normative sexual behaviors, some of which decrease as children age, such as self-stimulation, showing their sexual parts to other children, or French kissing. The authors explained that this might be because families who are more tolerant of nudity and sexuality may be more open about their children engaging in sexual behaviors. Comparing some of the data from the Friedrich et al. (1991) original study with a Dutch sample, Friedrich et al. (2000), found, again, that children engaged in more sexual behaviors if they came from families in which family nudity occurred. They also found that Dutch children tended to exhibit more sexual behaviors (e.g., self-stimulation; showing their sexual parts to other children) than U.S. children, and suggested that this may be due to more sexually permissive attitudes in Dutch culture. Both studies highlight that families’ attitudes toward sexuality, whether cultural or familial, may affect the ways that parents report children’s sexual behaviors. Families who are more open to family nudity may be more likely to report sexual behaviors and discuss sexual topics.

Additionally, those who view nudity as children may actually fare better in terms of body image, self-acceptance, and adjustment (Lewis & Janda, 1988; Negy & Winton, 2008; Story, 1979). In a study on preschool-aged children’s body self-concepts, Story (1979) found that children who came from social nudist families scored higher on positive body self-concept than children from nonnudist families. Similarly, in a study of 384 undergraduates, Negy and Winton (2008) found that those who were deemed “pronudity” based on their responses to a social nudity attitudes scale (which included items that gauged, for instance, participants’ hypothetical comfort with the idea of visiting a clothing-optional resort) tended to be more comfortable with their own body image when compared with students who fell into the “antinudity” category. Negy and Winton noted that there is limited research on the topic of family nudity, but they supported Okami’s (1995) conclusion that there is little evidence to suggest family nudity has harmful effects. However, since much of this research is outdated, there is a need for current research on these topics.

On the other hand, some studies have suggested that family nudity and sexuality are risk factors for sexual abuse, particularly incest. In a study on potential risk factors for sibling incest, Griffee et al. (2016) found that family nudity behaviors correlated with a higher likelihood of sibling incest. Sibling incest in this study was widely defined as “any kind of sexual behavior between siblings (even showing and looking at genitals)” (p. 626). Stroebel et al. (2013), using some items on family nudity derived from the Friedrich et al. (1991) study, found that family nudity, particularly father–daughter family nudity, was a predictor of father–daughter incest. Note that father–daughter incest in the Stroebel et al.’s (2013) study included sexual activity between daughters and father figures, such as stepfathers, and was not limited to biological fathers and daughters. Ultimately, the varied results from the few studies on the impact of family nudity demonstrate inconclusive evidence and the need for more research on this topic.

Outside family nudity, in two retrospective studies (Lamb, 2001; Lamb & Coakley, 1993), women recalled their engagement in childhood sexual play and games. For some of the young women, their openness about their sexual play, including “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” playing doctor, and playing with naked Barbies, was influenced by the discussions of normality and what is considered appropriate behavior for girls (Lamb, 2001). In these studies, it was argued that sexual play could be about power, self-discovery, curiosity, and learning about sexuality (Lamb, 2001) in developmentally appropriate ways as long as there was not coercion, persuasion, or manipulation (Lamb & Coakley, 1993). In general, typical sexual behaviors for young children include self-touching, showing one’s genitals to others, and playing spontaneous games with other children (e.g., playing doctor; playing house; chase and kiss; Kenny, Dinehart, & Wurtele, 2015; Lamb & Plocha, 2014). These behaviors can be distinguished from sexual acting out, and “sexual behavior that is developmentally inappropriate, coercive, or potentially harmful emotionally or physically” (Kellogg, 2010, p. 1234).

Parental Concerns in the Popular Press About Childhood Exposure to Nudity or Sex

In contrast to the limited attention in the scholarly literature, anecdotal reports in the popular press and on the Internet indicate that parents, caregivers, and educators have many questions and concerns about how to handle sex and nudity issues when interacting with children. For example, parents pose questions to each other about how long children can see siblings or parents nude for bathing or what to do if children encounter sexual behavior. The presence of such debates in the popular press make sense because adults who are on the front lines of raising children face a lack of clarity on how to handle sex and nudity (Eckler, 2017; Jacobson, 2013). When faced with concerns related to children viewing nudity or sex in real life, they may turn to sources they view as experts in an area they are unsure about, such as the Internet, parenting magazines, or parenting books (Martin & Torres, 2014; Stone et al., 2017).

To understand what questions parents have, to determine what information parents are provided with when they seek it out, and to provide some context for parental concerns, especially in light of the limited empirical research on the explicit topics of nudity and seeing parents having sex, we consulted online parenting magazines (e.g., Today’s Parent), news sources (e.g., CNN, Huffington Post), and parenting discussion boards (e.g., Reddit, MomMD). Using keywords about nudity and sex, we found a variety of topics addressed. For example, some parents believed that it is not okay for youth to see nudity, in part because having parents always being clothed around children would teach them modesty and humility (BabyCenter, 2011). Other parents wondered if seeing parents nude or having sex will come up in therapy when the child is an adult (Kerner, 2013). Others viewed nakedness in a positive light, because it can show what real people rather than porn or the media say bodies look like (Templeton, 2014), and can lead to a positive body image (Wallace, 2015). Still other parents viewed nudity as just a matter of practicality due to small living quarters (Adams, 2012).

When giving advice on how to handle such situations, some writers emphasized that nudity should never be forced on children, and if children walk in on parents having sex, parental response should be respectful of children’s questions or curiosity (Templeton, 2014; Wallace, 2015). When answering children’s questions, writers in the popular press emphasized that it is important to use age appropriate, yet accurate, language and follow-up with them (Adams, 2012; Jacobson, 2013; Kerner, 2013; Weston, 2007). Sometimes writers asked clinicians to provide their opinions to inform lay articles. For example, Robinson (2004) spoke with a psychiatrist who noted that nudity is not harmful to children if it is handled in a way that is natural and children’s questions are answered, suggesting that children become more accepting of their own bodies and sexuality if they receive normalizing responses.

Normative Childhood Sexuality

While the responses in the popular press give direction about to how to handle situations in which children view nudity and sexual behavior, family scholarship has yet to produce empirical evidence that can inform parental and professional concerns. In light of this deficit, we turned to the related topics of what constitutes normative childhood sexual behavior and how much information to provide children about sexual topics, including their own bodies. Although many professionals agree that open communication about sexuality is important, parents may still find their ability to talk about these issues with their children inhibited by their own lack of knowledge and discomfort (Allen et al., 2017; Ballard & Gross, 2009; Kenny et al., 2015; McGinn et al., 2016; National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth, n.d.; Stone et al., 2017).

An important area of working with parents (as well as teachers and clinicians) is in helping them distinguish between normal sexual behaviors in childhood (rooted in curiosity) and behaviors that are concerning, alarming, or possibly indicative of sexual abuse (inappropriate or extreme imitation of adult eroticism; Friedrich et al., 2001; Kenny et al., 2015; Lamb & Coakley, 1993; Thanasiu, 2004). Kenny et al. (2015) suggested that parents and teachers should understand that normal childhood sexual behavior is “motivated by curiosity and is not erotically focused” (p. 21); set clear rules about the public and private nature of self-touching and bathroom behavior; and teach children the correct names for their body parts (e.g., penis, vulva, vagina). In addition, the National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth (n.d.) provided the following guidelines:

Childhood sexual health exploration in the form of play is natural and healthy, and involves sexual behaviors that: Occur spontaneously and intermittently; are not the sole focus of children’s play, the interest in sex play is balanced by other interests and activities; involve children who are willing to engage in OR are generally light hearted and playful; are agreed upon (that is, no child is objecting to the behavior); do not cause any of the children strong uncomfortable feelings, such as anger, shame, fear, or anxiety; are not coercive; and often decrease with appropriate caregiver intervention when the child receives nurturing instructions to stop the behaviors.

In summary, we found limited substantive literatures on topics linked to children viewing sexual behavior and nudity in the home and in public. Perhaps because of the controversial nature of the topic, work on these issues has been pushed into the scholarly underground and subject to the shame, secrecy, and uncertainty that surrounds the topic in general. We hope to rekindle an open scholarly investigation of these issues. Although the empirical literature is quite small, there is clearly an urgent interest in the topic by parents and a need for accurate and up to date information for educators and clinicians (e.g., Ballard & Gross, 2009; Stone et al., 2013; Stone et al., 2017). There is also a need for more research on spontaneous, playful, noncoercive sexual behavior in children to elucidate how the particular issue of children accidentally viewing real-life sex and nudity might be examined.

The Current Study

The current examination of children seeing real sexual behavior and nudity in family and public contexts emerged through our research on young adults’ recollections of the first time they saw a sexual image. In our study of 644 college students (445 women and 199 men), we analyzed the settings in which participants discovered these images, noting that sexually explicit material is readily available, and that there is little parental monitoring and communication about sexuality (Allen et al., 2017; Allen & Lavender-Stott, 2015; Lavender-Stott & Allen, 2017). We found that most participants (83.59% of the women and 89.45% of the men) identified their first sexual image in a film/video, print, or online media source (e.g., Titantic, Playboy, Internet pornography). The other images identified were real people (9.89% of the women and 7.04% of the men); sex education (4.72% of the women and 2% of the men); and objects (e.g., a Barbie doll; 1.8% of the women and 1.51% of the men). Due to our unexpected finding that 8.46% of our combined sample equated actual nudity or sexual behavior as their first awareness that they were seeing something sexual, we searched the empirical literature and found only a few scholarly publications, reviewed above, that addressed the issue of children’s experience of viewing real people engaging in sexual behavior or being undressed. Thus, because we did not specifically ask participants about seeing “real people” in our study and it emerged spontaneously, we decided to highlight this seemingly taboo phenomenon.

Our primary goal in the current study was to add to a limited conversation among sexuality educators and researchers, clinicians, and family members to help understand what it is that children are seeing and experiencing in the face of public and private (e.g., familial) nudity and sexual behavior. The research questions we addressed for the current study are (a) What do young adults recall about seeing “real people” in terms of the first sexual image they encountered? (b) In what ways is viewing sexual behavior and nudity simply innocuous or potentially harmful?

Method

The Sexual Images Project

The data for this study are a subset from a larger study on sexual images that consisted of narratives from 644 undergraduate students enrolled in a large human sexuality class in a public university. The course, taught by the first author, enrolled on average 160 students per semester. The other authors have also taught this course multiple times.

The university’s institutional review board approved the study. Only data on gender and age were collected to preserve anonymity, as required by the institutional review board. Participants were 18 to 23 years of age, with a mean age of 20 years. As a course in the university’s core curriculum that satisfies both social science and global contexts requirements, the human sexuality class is open to all majors and consists of students from across the university. University demographics include students primarily from middle class backgrounds, where 73% of students identified as White; 7.5% identified as Asian; 4% identified as Black or African American; 3% as Hispanic; less than 1% as American Indian, Native Alaskan, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander; 9.5% did not self-identify; and 2% were international students.

The data consisted of student responses to a lecture on “Childhood and Adolescent Sexuality.” The lecture included an overview of theories of sexual development, major data sets used and research findings on child and adolescent sexuality, and variations in sexual attitudes and behaviors by gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and national/cultural diversity. At the end of the lecture, students were asked to write a reflection on their personal experiences with the lecture topic. Their papers were counted only as a record of class attendance, and the content was not graded. After recording attendance, a research assistant removed all original names and assigned pseudonyms. A member of the research team transcribed the anonymous written comments to a Word file. The questions to which students responded were as follows: What was the first sexually explicit image you ever saw? How old were you? Where were you? How did you feel about seeing it? What were you thinking? Who were you with? What did you do? Have you ever thought about it since?

Current Study Sample and Analysis Process

The 8.5% of the sample who saw a real person is the focus of the current analysis. They fell into the following categories: seeing parents having sex, seeing peers or strangers engaged in sexual acts, family nudity in the home, and nudity among peers or strangers. Only one person’s narrative involved sex abuse. We searched the literature for more research on the topic of viewing sex and nudity, and as we explained above, found little substantive examination of these explicit topics. We reflected on the limited attention to these issues in the literature, and came to realize our own reticence to talk about or teach about this subject matter. As feminist scholars, in particular, we became sensitized to our own participation in the cultural silencing and distancing from sex and nudity in an educational context. As a result, we conducted an exploratory study using the “real people” responses only.

The data coding and analysis process was conducted using a content analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) of secondary qualitative data (Long-Sutehall, Sque, & Addington-Hall, 2010; Radina & Downs, 2005). That is, we used an existing data set and generated new research questions to explore the data. We first read the 57 narratives multiple times to understand the young adults’ responses, individually and collectively, and to generate a coding scheme. During the initial coding process, we wrote theoretical memos about potential themes, and shared our ideas of the emerging codes, themes, and subthemes within and across cases. We initially approached the data by comparing the participants’ responses with each of the seven subquestions asked in the writing assignment, and then moved to a more focused coding process. Throughout, we noted any differences or similarities in how men and women reported their experiences.

In the next step of data analysis, we sorted through the list of initial codes to combine overlapping concepts and reduce redundancy in potential themes. We found that most participants in this unique subsample of the larger project reported on their overall reactions to viewing an embodied sexual image in two different ways: their immediate response, and whether it had any long-term resonance. That is, participants immediately interpreted the sexual images of real people they first viewed, and how their feelings related to personal, peer, and family reactions to the event they reported, followed by whether they continue to think about or interpret the event over time. Next, we describe the nature of the data on real people and suggest what it means in light of the previous discussion around youth seeing nudity and sexual behavior.

Results

To address our first research question of what young adults recall about seeing “real people” in terms of the first sexual image they encountered, our analysis revealed that 57 participants (14 men and 43 women) reported three kinds of sexual behavior or nudity: (a) parental, (b) other family members, and (c) nonfamily members (including peers and strangers; see Table 1). The most common experiences for women were walking in on parents having sex (n = 14; 32.55%) and viewing nonfamily nudity (n = 13; 30.23%). The most common experience for men was viewing nonfamily nudity (n = 6; 42.85%). Men were more likely to report viewing nudity (n = 9; 64.28%), and women were more likely to view sexual behavior (n = 24; 55.81%).

Table 1.

Type of Image Viewed.

	Females		Males
	n	%	n	%
Sexual behavior
Parents having sex	14	32.55	1	7.14
Other family sexual behavior	0	0	2	14.29
Nonfamily sexual behavior	9	20.93	2	14.29
Sexual abuse	1	2.33	0	0
Subtotal	24	55.81	5	35.72
Nudity
Parental nudity	5	11.63	2	14.29
Other family nudity	1	2.33	1	7.14
Nonfamily nudity	13	30.23	6	42.85
Subtotal	19	44.19	9	64.28
Total	43	100	14	100

In a few instances, it was possible that the participant was viewing both sex and nudity. However, the participant’s language and description of the events determined whether we categorized the image as either sexual behavior or nudity. For example, Chet saw his babysitter and her boyfriend nude together. Chet’s description did not include information about whether the babysitter and boyfriend were engaging in any particular sexual behavior; thus, we interpreted the experience as witnessing nudity. We now provide examples of each type of image viewed in the context of how the young adults recalled and responded to these experiences.

Viewing Sexual Behavior in Family and Public Contexts

Walking in on Parents Having Sex

One man and 14 women walked in on their parents having sex. Don said that he was 4 years old when he walked in on his mom and dad. He felt “weird” about seeing it, asking himself, “What are they doing?” He reacted by just going back to bed. He also reported that he still thinks about it “all the time,” revealing that, for him, the experience has not faded for nearly 20 years.

The situations described by the 14 women were depicted as uncomfortable, confusing, and embarrassing. Iris was in kindergarten when it happened to her:

I was walking to the bathroom late one night, and as I walked past their room their door was open and I saw them having sex. I was scared because I thought I had done something wrong by seeing them. I was wondering what they were doing and why they were doing it. I ran back to my room. I didn’t even want to go the bathroom anymore.

Two women revealed the additional complexity of excitement, comingled with embarrassment and fear of being caught. Loretta expressed her ambivalence as,

When I was 6, I saw my parents having sex. I was alone in the kitchen getting a drink of water and my parents left their door open. I couldn’t remember if I was excited/aroused or confused. One or the other or both. I was thinking that it was interesting and wanted to try it myself. I think about it sometimes, but I never told my parents I saw them, but I knew it was bad to watch and ran quickly to my room.

When “caught,” some women described parental reactions that varied from belittling, punishing, or helpful. Elinor said that at age 4, “I walked in on my parents having sex, but I don’t remember it. They like to tell the story to embarrass me. I probably blocked it out of my mind because I was so horrified.” Lorna said that when she was 8 years old, she “walked in on my parents having sex, alone, got punished and never went into their room again except during the middle of the day for several years for fear of ‘catching’ them and being punished again.”

Two women, however, said their mothers did talk to them about what they experienced. Tamar said that at age 11, she walked in on her parents having sex, by accident, felt bad, but they said it was okay. “I just walked out of the room and the next day we talked about it.” Phyllis, at age 11, walked in on her parents, and did not understand what was happening. Her parents “stopped immediately. . . . The next morning we had our real sex talk and my mom explained everything.” Thus, only 2 of the 15 participants who shared this experience (both women) described a supportive, educational parental response to a child walking in on them having sex. Although participants did not describe the experience as grave or traumatic, the overall tone of their reflections was one of discomfort and confusion, suggesting that more parental scaffolding could have helped allay their children’s worry, fear, or guilt.

Other Family Sexual Behavior

Only two of the men and none of the women described an experience of seeing a nonparental family member engaged in sexual behavior. For example, Abe shared that at age 9, “I caught my older brother making out with a girl. It was at my house and in my room (we shared a room at the time). I felt embarrassed about walking in the room.”

Sexual Behavior in Public Settings

Two of the 14 men and 9 of the 43 women identified their first sexual image as seeing a peer or stranger engaged in a sexual behavior. Some of these experiences included normative aspects of child sex play and learning about sex. Ashlie had mixed feelings about the event she saw:

The first time I saw something sexually explicit was in middle school, 7th grade. I was walking to class by myself when I saw a boy and a girl in between two lockers making out and groping each other. My thoughts were, “Whoa!” Half of me wanted to continue watching and point, and the other half of me wanted to run and hide my eyes.

Maude’s experience of seeing strangers in a public place also captures a child’s belief that it is wrong or bad to look at something of a sexual nature, but wanting to look anyway:

I saw two people having sex in a parking garage—in their car. I was in elementary school, maybe 2nd or 3rd grade. I was really embarrassed and I was with my Dad. I didn’t want him to catch me looking at them. I kept dropping something I was carrying and pretended my shoelaces were untied so I could keep looking without my Dad knowing. I don’t really think about it unless I’m in that same parking garage about once a week.

Sexual Abuse

Only one participant wrote that her first sexually explicit image was being a victim of sex abuse. Of all participants in the entire sample, Meg wrote the most detailed description of her experience, stating “my first sexual image was also my first act. It’s weird, sad and disgusting all rolled up in one.” She described the context, explaining that when she was about to enter the first grade, her babysitter allowed her to stay in her adolescent grandson’s room. It was in that situation where “this pervert sexually exploited me.” The babysitter’s grandson coerced Meg into engaging in sexual acts, which, at the time, she did not understand. Although this example demonstrates that first sexual images and experiences can be harmful and traumatic, only one participant in our entire study described an experience of sexual abuse.

Viewing Nudity in Family and Public Contexts

Although women (55.81% of 43 women) were somewhat more likely to report their first sexual image as involving sexual behavior, men were much more likely to report nudity (64.28% of 14 men). As shown in Table 1, participants reported three kinds of nudity: parental, other family, and peer/nonfamily nudity in public places.

Parental Nudity

Two men said they walked in on parents when they were getting dressed. Kirk, for example, said he felt confused, and wondered, “is that going to be what I have,” referring to seeing his father’s body. Five women said that they saw parental nudity. Although often uncomfortable or curious, they described their reactions to parental nudity with less alarm than those who walked in on their parents having sex. For example, Elsa said that when she was around 5 or 6 years old, she “walked into the bathroom when Dad was getting out of the shower . . . I was thinking it was gross and [they] pushed me out of the bathroom because Dad “wasn’t dressed.” Samantha described a more complicated reaction to seeing her father naked:

I don’t remember how I saw anything but I feel like I have this image in my head of my dad’s penis. I remember I took a shower with my dad or saw him come out of the shower. I was very young maybe 2 or 3. I thought it was odd. It was different from something I had seen before. I don’t know if I did anything or talked about it. I cringe at the fact that I saw my dad. I think its awkward.

Other Family Nudity

Only two participants described an example of other family nudity. Kelsy said,

My first sexually explicit image was probably my little brother . . . I was only 3 or 4 years old and didn’t really think or feel much about it. I don’t think I really understood what I was seeing and my parents didn’t make a big deal about it so it didn’t seem abnormal to me and I just ignored it.

Jude said that he found it sexually appealing to watch his aunt breastfeed his cousin, “I thought it was interesting even though I had seen breastfeeding before but my ex-aunt was kind of trashy . . . and I thought it was arousing and exciting.”

Peer, Stranger, or Public Nudity

Six of the 14 men viewed real people in public or in nonfamily contexts. For example, Jon said that the first sexually explicit image he saw “was when my older sister’s friend pulled down his pants in the middle of our street. I was around 7-8; at the time I thought he was just creepy and I felt confused.” However, the other men in this category had much more positive reactions to this type of nudity. For example, when Craig (aged 9 years) saw a stripper in Las Vegas, he thought, “this is pretty cool.”

Curiosity or disdain were common reactions among the 13 women who identified peer or public nudity. April called her experience “weird” indicating she was more shocked than anything else:

When I was about 10, my family and I went to see a musical/show. Apparently during this show, there’s a “sex scene” where the characters spin around on a bed, sing, and do a strip tease for the audience. It was strange because my brother and sisters and parents were all just sitting there. They said in the box office that the show was okay for 10-year-olds, but the lady definitely took off her top. She was completely topless.

Half of these women described a situation where a boy showed his penis, which was often described as a negative or uncomfortable experience. For example, Adele said she was 6 years old and having preschool naptime: “I remember being uncomfortable, but not being able to turn away. I thought it was wrong to look at. I couldn’t fall asleep and the kid a few cots down was facing me with his penis out.” Anya had a more positive experience with male nudity, when she was 6 years old and in the shower “with my best BF [boy friend]”:

[I] have the perfect pic still in my head. It was with [name] and today we are still friends. His parents put us in the shower and I saw his penis and stared during the whole shower. Thought it was the coolest thing in the world and went home and asked my big brother about his.

Is Seeing Sex and Nudity Harmful?

To address our second research question of whether viewing sexual behavior or nudity is simply innocuous or potentially harmful, we examined the data from participant reports of both immediate and longer term reactions to seeing a real person nude or engaged in a sexual act.

Immediate Reactions

First, to better understand the immediate reaction of participants, each response was examined and categorized for the overall tone of the description of the moment when the sex behavior or nudity was witnessed. Our analysis resulted in four categories of immediate reactions: negative, positive, ambivalent, and neutral (see Table 2). Participants in the negative category described reactions ranging from uncomfortable to upset, using language such as embarrassed, confused, grossed out, or horrified, while some indicated that they cried or ran from the scene. Positive reaction participants expressed more curiosity and sometimes reported humor, like giggling or laughing, especially in situations that occurred in the presence of their peers. Participants categorized as having an ambiguous immediate reaction expressed a mixture of confusion and being uncomfortable as well as humor and substantial curiosity. Indeed, it was common for participants in the ambiguous category to talk about taking a good look, and as in Maude’s example, when she “pretended my shoelaces were untied so I could keep looking.” The last category included participants who had a neutral tone about their immediate reaction. Some did not provide emotional descriptions, and some used language that normalized the experience. For example, Suki (aged 8-9 years) said, “I didn’t think what they were doing was bad or anything. I just figured it was what people did.”

Table 2.

Reactions to Seeing Real People as First Sexual Image.

	Females		Males
	n	%	n	%
Negative	22	51.16	4	28.57
Neutral	8	18.61	2	14.29
Positive	4	9.30	6	42.85
Ambivalent	9	20.93	2	14.29
Total	43	100	14	100

There were two major participant or situational characteristics that seemed to make a difference in a person’s overall immediate reaction: seeing one’s parents having sex, and participant’s gender. First, beyond the example of Meg’s sexual abuse, the one type of experience of viewing either sex or nudity that was most upsetting to participants was walking in on parents having sex. As previously noted, walking in on parents having sex was the first image viewed by 15 participants (26% of the sample). Indeed, 12 of these 15 expressed a singularly negative view, 2 were ambivalent, and 1 was neutral. Several quotes illustrate the confused, embarrassed, and uncomfortable responses of participants. For example, Wendy was 7 years old when it happened: “I was confused and unsure. Why is daddy squishing mommy?” Hope, recalling an instance from when she was 5 years old, said,

I was confused because I didn’t know what was going on. I was wondering why my father was all over my mother. I did not know what I was supposed to do. I just froze and then when my parents saw me, they told me to go to my room.

Betsy’s reaction, at age 7, of not knowing if her “mother was being hurt or hugged,” indicated that when a sex act is misunderstood, it could be perceived as a threat against the mother.

I was very confused; I didn’t know if my mother was being hurt or hugged. I first thought, why is daddy on top of mommy? I was by myself; I stood there and cried cause I didn’t know what was going on. I try not to think about it.

Participants’ descriptions of these reactions provide insight into how parents can contextualize the situation for their children. In the few cases where seeing either nudity or sexual activities inspired follow-up conversations, participants described how their parents helped them interpret and normalize what they had seen. Six participants reported conversations, usually with their mothers. As discussed earlier, Tamar and Phyllis had “sex talks” after seeing their parents having sex. Abigail, who “asked a lot of questions to [her] mom afterwards,” and Ellen (aged 3 or 4 years), who stated, “I do remember asking my mom about my dad’s penis—what it was, why we didn’t have one etc.,” elicited clarification from their mothers after seeing nudity, while Angie and Anya asked their sister and brother, respectively, about what they had seen. Overall, though, most participants did not indicate if their families provided information or support in the context of viewing confusing or negative images.

Second, as shown in Table 2, most of the men (42.85%) had a positive response to seeing a real person as their first sexual image, indicating they more often expressed being curious, intrigued, and/or excited by it. In contrast, only 9.30% of the women expressed a positive reaction to any of the categories of viewing a real person. Instead, women were much more negative (51.16%). Negative responses were expressed as being upset, embarrassed, horrified, or not knowing how to handle what they saw. Some of this difference is likely driven by differences in the types of images reported by males and females. Women reported almost all of the instances of seeing parents having sex, which was, as we have established above, a negative experience. However, gender trends also appear in responses to nudity. Specifically, men reported much more positive reactions to seeing nonparental nudity than women. The complex interplay of gender and social context deserves further, more targeted exploration.

Long-Term Impacts

Last, to assess perceptions of more long-term impacts, we compared participants’ responses with the prompt that asked, “Have you thought about it since?” Indeed, 40% of the sample (17 women and 6 men) said, yes, they had thought about it since, but about 46% (19 women and 7 men) said that no they had not, or “not really.” The remaining 14% did not provide an answer to this particular prompt. Of those who reported thinking about the event since it happened, most indicated occasionally thinking about it. Some of the participants who saw parents having sex indicated thinking about it more frequently, or trying not to think about it. In addition, Olivia, the one participant who saw an adult exhibitionist masturbating noted that she was horrified and still thinks of it to this day, stating,

When I was 13 on a school bus with my soccer team . . . me and my friend decided to just stare at people as they drove by. A guy in a beat up yellowish car pulled up beside us . . . he started masturbating and making faces at us. I screamed! I still think of that to this day.

Generally, though, participants’ reports of their immediate reactions to seeing these images were more pronounced than any indication that viewing the images had a lasting effect. Regardless of the emotional tone of their immediate response to the event, and with the exception of Meg, who experienced sexual abuse, none of the participants’ comments clearly indicated a lingering, substantial, harmful impact of seeing a real person as their first sexual image. Although some said they “cringed” or thought it was gross when they have remembered the event, others indicated that they have looked back on the experience and been amused by their own naivety or lack of understanding.

Discussion

Perceiving and Reacting to Images of Sex and Nudity: Gender Matters

In this study, we examined the recollections of 57 young women and men who responded that the first sexual image they saw involved a real person. Viewing nudity (such as seeing others changing their clothes or getting dressed after a shower) was the most commonly reported experience for men (64.29%), and viewing sexual behavior (such as seeing couples kissing or parents having sex) was the most commonly reported experience for women (55.81%). For both men and women, viewing sex and nudity were more likely to happen outside the home—among peers or strangers, although the public setting was more pronounced for men (71.43% public; 28.57% family) than for women (53.49% public; 46.51% family).

Given the exploratory nature of the data, it is difficult to ascertain distinctions between how men and women responded to seeing sex or nudity. For example, we cannot compare men and women in terms of “walking in on parents” because only one man reported this experience, whereas one third of the women did. We do not know if females simply have more access or freedom to enter their parents’ bedrooms. Furthermore, given the overall positivity among males, at least in their retelling of the experience of viewing a real person being nude or engaged in a sexual behavior, more men “blew it off” than women. Men also were more likely to define nudity as a sexual image. More research is needed to examine how youth are socialized into adult sexual behavior, as filtered through relatively taboo associations with sex and nudity. The women’s more negative reactions overall are in line with the ongoing disjuncture between how sexuality is constructed by gender from childhood through emerging adulthood (Halpern & Kaestle, 2014; Lamb & Plocha, 2014). In terms of the macrostructure of society, women are far more subjected to ambiguity and negativity in their emerging sexual development (Lavender-Stott & Allen, 2017; Edwards, 2016; Kaestle & Allen, 2011; Lamb, 2001).

The data also speak to the normalization of childhood sexual games, such as boys exposing their penis to peers (primarily to girls). This was the subject of several recollections, and reactions involved giggling, thinking it was funny, or dismissing it as gross, especially when in the presence of peers. Reactions to peer nudity were generally not described as upsetting or alarming, which supports evidence from Lamb and Coakley’s (1993) study that noncoercive sex play among peers falls within the normative range.

Long-Term Implications: Where Is the Harm?

Although we found little evidence that the experiences these young adults recalled have had a lasting impact on them, women’s greater prevalence of negative reactions to sexual behavior and nudity is noteworthy. One woman had a profound experience of sexual abuse, and most of the women who walked in on parents having sex found it overwhelmingly negative. A particular sensitivity was a sense of protectiveness toward their mothers, by wondering if their mothers were being hurt. Future research will help shed light on the long-term impacts, and could delve further into the differences in impacts based on gender or what was viewed.

Although we did not explicitly ask the participants to write about how their parents’ responded to their viewing sexual behavior or nudity, the potential impact of parental silence is evident by how few participants spontaneously reported on any kind of parental reaction. Again, of the 15 participants who reported walking in on parents having sex, few reported any kind of response. Of these 15, only two reported a helpful parental response—discussing sexual behaviors in a nurturing and informative way and not blaming, shaming, ignoring, or silencing the child. A warm and openly communicative response from parents is essential in normalizing and explaining the images that children see; indeed, it is parents who have the most opportunities to have a constructive influence on children’s emerging understanding of sexuality (Greenfield, 2004; Stone et al., 2017). Rather than the actual images that children saw, more concerning is that most of the parents of the youth in this study were not reported as being candid or nurturing in their responses. Instead, some participants had recollections of being punished or belittled. Reflecting on these negative behaviors of their parents, young adults reveal the kind of parental behaviors they wanted to receive, rather than what they did receive.

On balance, the experiences of observing sex and nudity by parents, peers, or strangers can be upsetting for a young child, but in the long run, no one reflected that they were scarred or harmed, with the exception of the young woman who had been sexually abused by a teenage boy. The evidence does suggest, however, that adults may have missed opportunities to protect or help children by normalizing or understanding what they were seeing and experiencing. Still adults’ intentions and their lasting impacts were not exploitive or abusive.

Implications for Practice

This study provides several implications for clinical and educational practice regarding the issues raised by children accidentally viewing nudity and sexuality in real-life scenarios. Little research exists on the long-term impact of children viewing nudity or sexual behavior. Some of the existing research implies that these situations are harmful for children. However, our exploratory study provides preliminary evidence that when sexuality and nudity are viewed in a context that is not abusive or coercive, it is unlikely to be perceived as harmful. Clinicians and educators can use this information in their own work to know what is and is not appropriate behavior. They can also prepare parents and teachers for the possibility of these situations occurring, including discussing ways to respond to children who have witnessed these scenarios.

Clinically, this is a topic that practitioners should be prepared for when dealing with clients or patients. First, this may assist clinicians in determining what does and does not constitute sexual abuse, particularly from a family standpoint. Although it is not appropriate to intentionally allow children to view sexual intercourse or other explicit sexual activity, there may be gray areas when it comes to making decisions about allowing children to see family members nude, and in which contexts this may be more acceptable. By understanding the ways that young adults interpret their past experiences, clinicians can be informed about long-term outcomes from these situations so that they can help clients and patients understand how children may be affected. Additionally, since people ask questions in the popular press about whether these topics may be of clinical relevance later in life (Kerner, 2013), clinicians can be prepared to discuss this with parents of children who have been exposed to nudity or sexuality, or with adult children who viewed them in the past.

Educators, too, can have a better idea of what is and is not normative. Research on normative sexual behavior in childhood is fairly common, as is research on sexual abuse. While viewing family nudity and/or sexuality are not common in the literature, they are sometimes equated with sexual abuse, as indicated by Okami’s (1995) examination of this issue. Yet this equation could be harmful for children and families when there is no sexual abuse occurring in the family. Educators need to be able to recognize what is and is not normative sexual behavior in children, but they should also be aware of what is and is not normative behavior in families. This way, they can help protect children who are victims of sexual abuse, but they can also be informed about what behaviors do not constitute sexual abuse.

Limitations

The main limitation of this study is the nature of the sample. University students typically have more privileged backgrounds than their age mates in the general population, thus limiting our ability to speak to reflections on childhood experiences in general. Furthermore, we were unable to collect data on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other social locations that structure individuals’ opportunities and experiences of marginalization. The sample is thus limited to only male and female peers from similar educational backgrounds.

A second limitation is that the data only reveal what participants perceived was their first sexual image. That is, some participants may have viewed nudity or sexual behavior in their home or in public, but did not interpret or report it as a sexually explicit stimulus. Given that in the larger sample, the most prevalent response was to interpret the prompt of “sexually explicit image” as something they saw in print, film/TV, or on the Internet (e.g., porn), we do not know how many of them may also have first seen a parent, sibling, friend, or stranger nude or engaged in sexual behaviors, yet did not see it or identify it as sexual. Given that we were only addressing participants’ perceptions and their own labeling and interpretation of those perceptions, we do not know if there was overlap, or why some defined actual nudity, in particular, as sexual, whereas others did not.

Third, this research was retrospective in nature. Thus, any immediate reactions, thoughts, or feelings may be reinterpreted over time or specifically when asked these questions. Fourth, since the overarching study where the data were compiled focused on first sexual images for youth, we did not anticipate needing a question about parental reactions and thus did not specifically ask questions about what parents said or did. On balance, it is very difficult to talk directly or longitudinally to children about their perceptions or experiences with sexuality and nudity (Lamb & Plocha, 2014). Finding evidence of this topic among participants, especially when not specifically elicited, provided a rare opportunity to obtain data on a topic that is difficult to investigate under any circumstances. Perhaps given the anonymous and reflective nature of their responses, we were fortunate to secure evidence, though not ideal, on this experience that is often the subject of silence and whispers than overt acknowledgment and discussion. Although this exploratory examination of an understudied phenomenon emerged from a broader inquiry, we hope to spark further conversation and systematic research on the issue of seeing real people.

Future Research Directions

Considering the past four decades, as Lewis and Janda noted in 1988, Okami et al. in 1998, and Wurtele and Kenny in 2011, there is still limited research regarding youth and sexuality development related to seeing real people naked or engaging in sexual behaviors. The lack of empirical evidence supporting or refuting the impact of seeing real people nude or being sexual presents a challenge to providing guidance to parents, educators, and practitioners. Thus, more empirical research is needed in order to understand and intervene into how parents can respond to childhood experiences and questions regarding sex and nudity.

We acknowledge that there are ethical considerations that must be made when conducting research on youth and sexuality (Flanagan, 2014). With that in mind, retrospective studies with young adults can be beneficial (Lamb & Plocha, 2014), particularly if there are questions that focus on child and adolescent sexual behaviors. Scholars should also ask more specific questions about youth’s past and current reactions, body image, comfort in romantic and sexual relationships, and parental attitudes after seeing real people in the nude or sexual behaviors.

Doing similar work with parents’ recollections as well as following parents and youth over time after an event of observing nudity or sexuality could be a next step. In particular, parents could be asked about how they handled the situation. As it would be unethical to conduct such work as an experiment, parents joining a study about their children’s sexuality would be opting-in to the research, thus potentially creating a volunteer bias. Parents who would volunteer may be more open and accepting of their children’s sexuality as a natural and normal part of development. One way to potentially reduce volunteer bias is for young adults and their parents to reflect on the situation to address the questions regarding parental attitudes, parental reaction, body image, sexual debut, sexual play, sexual behaviors during youth, and comfort in romantic and sexual relationships in a dyadic fashion or assessing fictitious scenarios.

Beyond the need for more research on youth’s experience of seeing others naked or engaged in sexual behaviors, there is a need for empirically based information for parents and practitioners. As we noted earlier, the questions about the ramifications of youth seeing people naked or walking in on them having sex are asked by parents frequently—to counselors, teachers, and other parents. However, the responses are based on personal opinion and not empirical evidence (Lewis & Janda, 1988). Scholars can provide the information and evidence to parents as well as practitioners in a way that is easily accessible. Accessible outlets for scholarly research to be translated for a lay audience include the parenting magazines and Internet blogs where such questions are posed. Translational research that reaches a wider audience than scholarly journals is necessary to ease some of the anxiety about sex and nudity, particularly in the home, as well as to assist parents and professionals in understanding and normalizing sexuality for children as they develop.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Katherine R. Allen

References

Adams

(2012, May 7). Our family nudity policy, or lack thereof. Kveller. Retrieved from http://www.kveller.com/our-family-nudity-policy-or-lack-thereof/

Allen

K. R.

Henderson

A. C.

(2017). Family theories: Foundations and applications. Malden, MA: Wiley.

Allen

K. R.

Lavender-Stott

E. S.

(2015). Family contexts of informal sex education: Young men’s perceptions of first sexual images. Family Relations, 64, 393-406. doi:10.1111/fare.12128

Allen

K. R.

Lavender-Stott

E. S.

Gary

E. A.

(2017). Learning from the young: Therapeutic implications of emerging sexual knowledge in working with families. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 29, 149-169. doi:10.1080/08952833.2017.1317510

BabyCenter. (2011). Children and parental nudity: Opinions and advice. Retrieved from https://community.babycenter.com/post/a28685735/children_and_parental_nudity_-_opinions_advice

Ballard

S. M.

Gross

K. H.

(2009). Exploring parental perspectives on parent-child sexual communication. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 4, 40-57. doi:10.1080/15546120902733141

Beckett

M. K.

Elliott

M. N.

Martino

Kanouse

D. E.

Corona

Klein

D. J.

Schuster

M. A.

(2010). Timing of parent and child communication about sexuality relative to children’s sexual behaviors. Pediatrics, 125, 34-42. doi:10.1542/peds.2009-0806

Bogdan

R. C.

Biklen

S. K.

(2007). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theories and methods (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Eckler

(2017, February 13). When your kid catches you having sex. Today’s Parent. Retrieved from https://www.todaysparent.com/kids/when-your-kid-catches-you-having-sex/

10.

Edwards

(2016). Women’s reflections on formal sex education and the advantage of gaining informal sexual knowledge through a feminist lens. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 16, 266-278. doi:10.1080/14681811.2015.1088433

11.

Flanagan

(2014). Ethical beginnings: Reflexive questioning in designing child sexuality research. Counselling & Psychotherapy Research, 14, 139-146. doi:10.1080/14733145.2013.779734

12.

Friedrich

W. N.

Fisher

J. L.

Dittner

Acton

Berliner

Butler

. . . Wright

(2001). Child Sexual Behavior Inventory: Normative, psychiatric, and sexual abuse comparisons. Child Maltreatment, 6, 37-49. doi:10.1177/1077559501006001004

13.

Friedrich

W. N.

Grambsch

Broughton

Kuiper

Beilke

R. L.

(1991). Normative sexual behavior in children. Pediatrics, 88, 456-464. doi:10.1097/00004583-199203000-00004

14.

Friedrich

W. N.

Sandfort

T. G. M.

Oostveen

Cohen-Kettenis

P. T.

(2000). Cultural differences in sexual behavior: 2-6 Year old Dutch and American children. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 12, 117-129. doi:10.1300/J056v12n01_08

15.

Greenfield

P. M.

(2004). Inadvertent exposure to pornography on the Internet: Implications of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks for child development and families. Applied Developmental Psychology, 25, 741-750. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2004.09.009

16.

Griffee

Swindell

O’Keefe

S. L.

Stroebel

S. S.

Beard

K. W.

Kuo

Stroupe

(2016). Etiological risk factors for sibling incest: Data from an anonymous computer-assisted self-interview. Sexual Abuse, 28, 620-659. doi:10.1177/1079063214558941

17.

Halpern

C. T.

Kaestle

C. E.

(2014). Sexuality in emerging adulthood. In Tolman

D. L.

Diamond

L. M.

(Eds.), APA handbook of sexuality and psychology, Vol. 1: Person-based approaches (pp. 487-522). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

18.

Jacobson

(2013, January 29). Caught in the act? What to do when your kids walk in on you having sex. ParentMap. Retrieved from https://www.parentmap.com/article/caught-in-the-act-by-your-kids-how-to-cope

19.

Jerman

Constantine

(2010). Demographic and psychological predictors of parent–adolescent communication about sex: A representative statewide analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39, 1164-1174. doi:10.1007/s10964-010-9546-1

20.

Josephs

(2015). How children learn about sex: A cross-species and cross-cultural analysis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44, 1059-1069. doi:10.1007/s10508-015-0498-0

21.

Kaestle

C. E.

(2016). Feminist perspectives advance four challenges to transform family studies. Sex Roles, 75, 71-77. doi:10.1007/s11199-016-0636-8

22.

Kaestle

C. E.

Allen

K. R.

(2011). The role of masturbation in healthy sexual development: Perceptions of young adults. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 983-994. doi:10.1007/s10508-010-9722-0

23.

Kellogg

N. D.

(2010). Sexual behaviors in children: Evaluation and management. American Family Physician, 82, 1233-1238.

24.

Kenny

M. C.

Dinehart

L. H.

Wurtele

S. K.

(2015). Recognizing and responding to young children’s sexual behaviors in the classroom. Young Exceptional Children, 18, 17-29. doi:10.1177/1096250613510726

25.

Kerner

(2013, April 24). When your child walks in during sex. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/24/health/kerner-kids-sex/

26.

Lamb

(2001). The secret lives of girls: What good girls really do—sex play, aggression, and their guilt. New York, NY: Free Press.

27.

Lamb

(2010). Feminist ideals for a healthy female adolescent sexuality: A critique. Sex Roles, 62, 294-306. doi:10.1007/s11199-009-9698-1

28.

Lamb

Coakley

(1993). “Normal” childhood sexual play and games: Differentiating play from abuse. Child Abuse & Neglect, 17, 515-526. doi:10.1016/0145-2134(93)90026-2

29.

Lamb

Plocha

(2014). Sexuality in childhood. In Tolman

D. L.

Diamond

L. M.

(Eds.), APA handbook of sexuality and psychology, Vol. 1: Person-based approaches (pp. 415-432). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

30.

Lavender-Stott

E. S.

Allen

K. R.

(2017). Young women’s reflections of viewing a sexual image for the first time. Sex Roles, 77, 628-638. doi:10.1007/s11199-017-0764-9

31.

Lefkowitz

E. S.

Stoppa

T. M.

(2006). Positive sexual communication and socialization in the parent-adolescent context. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 112, 39-55. doi:10.1002/cd.161

32.

Lewis

R. J.

Janda

L. H.

(1988). The relationship between adult sexual adjustment and childhood experiences regarding exposure to nudity, sleeping in the parental bed, and parental attitudes toward sexuality. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 17, 349-362. doi:10.1007/BF01541812

33.

Long-Sutehall

Sque

Addington-Hall

(2010). Secondary analysis of qualitative data: A valuable method for exploring sensitive issues with an elusive population? Journal of Research in Nursing, 16, 335-344. doi:10.1177/1744987110381553

34.

Martin

K. A.

Torres

J. M. C.

(2014). Where did I come from? US parents’ and preschool children’s participation in sexual socialisation. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 14, 174-190. doi:10.1080/14681811.2013.856291

35.

McGinn

Stone

Ingham

Bengry-Howell

(2016). Parental interpretations of “childhood innocence”: Implications for early sexuality education. Health Education, 116, 580-594. doi:10.1108/HE-10-2015-0029

36.

McKee

Albury

Dunne

Grieshaber

Hartley

Lumby

Mathews

(2010). Healthy sexual development: A multidisciplinary framework for research. International Journal of Sexual Health, 22, 14-19. doi:10.1080/19317610903393043

37.

National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth. (n.d.). Better lives, through better choices. Retrieved from http://ncsby.org/content/normative-sexual-behavior

38.

Negy

Winton

(2008). A comparison of pro- and anti-nudity college students on acceptance of self and of culturally diverse others. Journal of Sex Research, 45, 287-294. doi:10.1080/00224490802204464

39.

Okami

(1995). Childhood exposure to parental nudity, parent-child co-sleeping, and “primal scenes”: A review of clinical opinion and empirical evidence. Journal of Sex Research, 32, 51-64. doi:10.1080/00224499509551774

40.

Okami

Olmstead

Abramson

P. R.

Pendleton

(1998). Early childhood exposure to parental nudity and scenes of parental sexuality (“primal scenes”): An 18-year longitudinal study of outcome. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 27, 361-384. doi:10.1023/A:1018736109563

41.

Radina

M. E.

Downs

K. J. M.

(2005). Asking new questions of existing qualitative data. In Bengtson

V. L.

Acock

A. C.

Allen

K. R.

Dilworth-Anderson

Klein

D. M.

(Eds.), Sourcebook of family theory and research (pp. 63-64). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

42.

Robinson

(2004). The naked truth on family nudity. Retrieved from http://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/teaching-tolerance/the-naked-truth-on-family-nudity/

43.

Sprague

(2005). Feminist methodologies for critical researchers: Bridging differences. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

44.

Stewart

S. D.

(2017). Co-sleeping: Parents, children, and musical beds. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

45.

Stone

Ingham

Gibbins

(2013). “Where do babies come from?” Barriers to early sexuality communication between parents and young children. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 13, 228-240. doi:10.1080/14681811.2012.737778

46.

Stone

Ingham

McGinn

Bengry-Howell

(2017). Talking relationships, babies and bodies with young children: The experiences of parents in England. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 17, 588-603. doi:10.1080/14681811.2017.1332988

47.

Story

M. D.

(1979). Factors associated with more positive body self-concepts in preschool children. Journal of Social Psychology, 108, 49-56. doi:10.1080/00224545.1979.9711960

48.

Stroebel

S. S.

Kuo

O’Keefe

S. L.

Beard

K. W.

Swindell

Kommor

M. J.

(2013). Risk factors for father–daughter incest: Data from an anonymous computerized survey. Sexual Abuse, 25, 583-605. doi:10.1177/1079063212470706

49.

Templeton

(2014, September 11). Why I want my sons to see me naked. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-templeton/why-i-want-my-sons-to-see-me-naked_b_5797920.html

50.

Thanasiu

P. L.

(2004). Childhood sexuality: Discerning healthy from abnormal sexual behaviors. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 26, 309-319. doi:10.17744/mehc.26.4.y0ndah5y1hkm18cf

51.

Wallace

(2015, January 13). Brutally honest: Is it okay to be naked in front of your kids? CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/16/living/feat-brutally-honest-parenting-naked/

52.

Ward

L. M.

(2016). Media and sexualization: State of empirical research, 1995-2015. Journal of Sex Research, 53, 560-577. doi:10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496

53.

Weston

L. C.

(2007, January/February). What to do if the kids catch you in the act. WebMD. Retrieved from http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/if-the-kids-catch-you#1

54.

Wurtele

S. K.

Kenny

M. C.

(2011). Normative sexuality development in childhood: Implications for developmental guidance and prevention of childhood sexual abuse. Counseling and Human Development, 43(9), 1-24.