Boy in the women’s locker room – scandal or norm

“Situation: fitness club, women’s locker room. Naked aunts are everywhere (some from the shower, some from the pool), and a boy of about nine sits next to my locker. The question is how to put on a swimsuit?

Or else – I go out of the pool to shower, start taking off my swimsuit, mom and son of about six come out of the sauna. Damn, she thinks it’s okay ?! I washed it there slowly, naked myself too. In general, today, seeing two boys near school age in the locker room, I almost told my mothers everything I think. The only thing that stopped me was that I know what I’ll hear in response – he’s still a child!

I remember myself when I was 5-6 years old and I have no idea who I would grow up to be if my dad took me to the men’s bath … “

As soon as a heartbreaking post appeared on the forum, similar stories poured in the comments, as if from a cornucopia.

“One mother, while she was dressing herself, threw a towel over her son’s head, and then took it off – and he sat, staring at the women. A child of about 9 years old, he was already deliberately looking at everything ”, – recounted the story he heard from his wife, Konstantin, one of the people discussing the problem. The man even threatened to complain to the prosecutor’s office: they say, theoretically, the situation can be considered as child molestation.

As a result, in this particular gym, they began to ensure that boys over 3 years old were not allowed into the women’s locker room. Moreover, it turns out that there was a playroom for children, in which you can safely leave your child for two hours free of charge while mom is sweating on the walkway.

But there is one more question. Isn’t it too early for a boy at five, six, or even nine years old to see a naked female body so frankly? Not my mother’s – and someone else’s. The psyche of children is fragile, but what if it gets injured?

– About psychological trauma – complete nonsense, – says 32-year-old Marina, the mother of a 12-year-old son. – Previously, children in villages from early childhood knew the difference between a man and a woman, as well as where children come from, helped peasant parents to give birth to cows, watched a cat kitten or a dog puppy. And no one had any injuries – on the contrary, there was a healthy and natural attitude to how nature arranged. And there were not so many pedophiles and perverts of all stripes.

Marina is sure: it is we who, with our unhealthy excitement around the sex difference, make future men traumatized. In her opinion, it was necessary not to throw a towel over the child’s head, as if something shameful was happening in the locker room, but simply calmly explain to him how a woman differs from a man.

– Children at any age, if you communicate with them normally, perceive everything normally. The boy would have looked a little, and then he would have lost interest, he would have buried himself in a book or a tablet. I have a familiar family where dad, mom and children wash in the bath together. And nothing, a wonderful family, well-educated good children.

– I consider it unacceptable to show naked women to boys and naked men to girls. I myself am annoyed by naked toddlers on the beach, – says 22-year-old still childless Katerina.

The girl is perplexed – why is it impossible to put panties on the baby? But there are also beaches for nudists, and these people argue that walking naked is normal.

– I will never take my child to a nude beach! There really, a child can get psychological trauma. In kindergarten, sometimes boys and girls take off their panties and show each other what is under them, and this, too, is probably not entirely normal. And this mother with a towel is completely crazy, since she considers it normal to take the boy to a place where there are many naked women. She herself develops an unhealthy curiosity in her son, and it remains to be seen how this will affect him in the future.

What do experts think about this? Bessarion Gvilava, child psychologist, specialist in working with difficult teenagers:

– There is nothing particularly terrible in the fact that the boy was spying on women, no, and nothing terrible in the future will most likely happen to him. Although, of course, everything depends on the individual psychological characteristics of a person and on the age of the child.

Our expert believes that if the child was not forcibly involved in the screenings, for some purpose, then there will be no particular harm.

– I am more worried about the towel that my mother threw over the boy’s head – this is some kind of violence against the person. All the same, the child saw everything, – says the psychologist.

The specialist recalled: boys in the old days loved to spy on women in the baths, we know this from cinema and literature. And nothing, no deviations.

– But from the age of 11-12 and older, I would advise not to give the child unnecessary impressions from looking at a crowd of naked women, – warns Bessarion Gvilava.