Sanna-Mari notes that in Finland, nudity attracts nowhere near the attention
that it does in many other cold countries.  She asks if I have anything in
mind (about our fears of touching?  or about cultural differences?).

From a Norwegian perspective I can report that we all know the Finns are a
little, well, different.  That unbelievably complicated language, for one
thing.  And their leaders invite visiting dignitaries into the saunas with
them to discuss politics while sweating naked together.  It hasn't led to
any major outbreaks of hostility to my knowledge, and Finland isn't the
country most infamous for its high concentration of monstrous pedophiles,
that dubious honour being held in Europe by Belgium.  Again, I am speaking
from the biased perspective of one who lives in Norway, which we all know is
Perfect in Every Way.  (T very far in C now, getting a cramp in fact.)

I agree with Sanna-Mari that culture determines what we see as normal and
abnormal.  In the US that family would be abnormal in most communities, also
for their own inability to see that they were quite far from accepted norms.

OTOH, I live in a family of four and we don't own a stitch of pyjamas
between the four of us.  (Bet that was more than any of you needed to know!)
We take big t-shirts along to sleep in when we travel.  We feel awkward
being naked around strangers except in the showers at the public swimming
pool, or at the doctor's.  At home we don't much care.  We all know we have
bodies, and we know perfectly well whose they are too, and have no trouble
respecting each other's boundaries.  Without knowing more about this
family's background it's hard to know what to think, and I have heard
stranger and less justified cases than that one where children were removed
from parental custody, in the US.

I was more bothered by the third case of Kathy's, where the mother locked
her children in their rooms at night and let them go around soiled in feces,
but was permitted to visit with them after losing custody as long as she
refrained from doing the one thing that sounded halfway sane in the story,
namely giving them her milk.  The mother wasn't the only weird thing in that
story!

This afternoon I was waiting to get on a plane and watched a father putting
his son on, likely to go back home to mom.  Children of divorced parents do
a lot of 'unaccompanied minor' commuting by plane here.  I wasn't really
paying attention, and then suddenly I was getting all weepy, as this
ordinary looking dad with a tractor cap hugged his boy, who was about 9,
kissed him on each cheek, ruffled his hair, hugged him again, kissed him
goodbye again, and this time the boy kissed the dad's cheek too, and I could
overhear him saying 'Soon school will be out and you'll be coming for 3
weeks!', and they hugged AGAIN and then the boy and the dad were doing a
special happy wave goodbye routine until the boy was so far down the ramp
they couldn't see each other any more.  I have friends in the US who parent
their sons that way and they are certainly not the norm, but do I ever wish
they were!  By the way, it is illegal to spank children or otherwise use
physical force to punish them for supposed misdeeds, in Norway.  We do have
child batterers, but no one condones the behavior.

I don't know a thing about the BF history of that child, or of his father,
but I bet there are people in the US who would have been aghast at their
physical display of affection.  I had a conversation once with an American
grandmother who honestly believed that it was risky for fathers to change
their infant daughters' diapers after the age of 8 or 9 months because they
might not be able to resist the impulse to have sexual intercourse with
them, and that girls of that age and above should be cautioned against
exposing themselves, for fear of arousing any male in the vicinity into
attack mode.  Cultural difference, or just paranoia?  You tell me!

But tell me next week when I am back on the list.
Rachel Myr

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