Nordic Solution to Raising Body-Neutral Kids

Super weird or super normal? Depends where you grew up.

Hi friends! Let me introduce this topic by saying I’ll be writing about something that’s totally taboo in the US, but not at all in the Nordics. I have debated whether I should write about this at all, for the concern that it’s just too risky, and potentially without cultural context—if you read this without having visited Nordic countries—could be misunderstood.

But I decided I’ll go for it, because as a cultural difference, this is just huge, and as a parent, I’m currently navigating how to explain and how to teach these opposite views to my kids.

Just know that, if you are in Finland, you will think this topic is not even worth discussing, it’s that normal. If you are elsewhere, you will probably think that the way your culture deals with this, is the most appropriate way. But it’s worth opening our eyes to this, because I can see how the Nordic mindset here teaches kids to become naturally body positive, body-neutral, and more gender-equal.

Trying to figure out how to break this topic to my boys.

Nordic Body-Neutral Attitude

“Swim classes start again!” read the message from my boys’ teacher.

My reaction, was first “yes, how fun!” and “I can’t believe they teach kids swimming at school for free!”, and then “oh-my-god”.

Let me explain why.

I grew up in Finland where we have very neutral, positive and equal attitudes about bodies: from my childhood, I remember numerous moments when I was running on beaches without clothes, swam in lakes without clothes and jumped into piles of snow from the sauna without clothes. They were happy moments. What’s more, if you were pre-pubescent, you might do all these things with your pre-pubescent friends and relatives, as well, no matter their gender.

In dressing and locker rooms, that are often divided by gender, I was used to having just communal—no private—changing or shower areas. I always thought a nude body was just a nude body, and no big deal. Nudity never meant the same as sexuality to me—that’s something completely different and in a grown-up, romantic context, it might include a body. This is in general how most people in Scandinavia feel about these things.

[In today’s world, we of course talk about not just two genders, but rather gender identities, but I won’t go there with this conversation].

My boys, on the other hand, have grown up in the American system, where your body has “private parts”, meaning they are strictly private, hidden from anyone else’s view, at all times, including kids’ their own age. Unlike me as a child, no one in the US certainly runs around outside or plays naked (can you imagine?!), but also, unlike me, no one would consider changing or showering in communal spaces: even kids use their own individual changing and shower areas.

My “oh my god” reaction was to my realization, that my boys would not have been used to the extremely body-neutral and body-positive attitudes that would showcase themselves in their first Nordic swimming class. So this would need some prep.

Message to the teacher

I immediately sat down to type a message back to the teacher, so I could understand what the boys’ experience would be like, so I could prepare them in advance.

“How will the entire process go, especially in the changing room?” I asked, knowing that the communal dressing and shower practices could be shocking to my boys.

In Finland, by the time school starts at 7 years old, boys and girls start using dressing rooms by gender, so I knew that the process would start on the boys’ side. So that, at least, would make this slightly easier.

“Before swimming, the boys undress in the locker room, and shower. They also rinse their swim trunks in the shower, for hygienic reasons, before putting them on. And then they head to the pool. When they get off the pool, they repeat the process in reverse,” the teacher explained.

Sounds typical, doesn’t it? Except for the fact that you literally can’t go change or shower completely in private.

Per the societal messaging in the US, no one should see your body, and you should not see anyone else’s. But in Finland, you couldn’t help by break these rules.

“The Talk” for American Scandinavian Boys

The next day, trying to rush us all out the door to school and daycare, I finally managed to give the boys “the talk”.

“Boys, sit down, I have to tell you something really important before the swim class today.”

Already decked in their waterproof outdoor pants, with backpacks on that were filled with towels and swim trunks and books, they sat down criss-cross on the mud-proof rug of our apartment entryway hallway, with eyes wide open.

“Today is your first Finnish swim class and there are some things that are really different from what you are used to in the States. When you go into the dressing room, everyone will undress in the same room.”

“In the same room?!!”

“Yes. They are no individual or private places where you can go change. All the other boys will change and shower right next to you.”

“Girls too?!” one of my boys explained, almost gasping for air, out of shock. (Had he been a year or two younger, then the answer would have been yes. Finland considers kids pretty gender neutral before they turn school-age.)

“No, just boys. Then everyone also showers together, without the swim trunks, together in the same place, under rows of showers. At the same time, you rinse your swim trunks, and then you put them on.”

Both boys stare at me in rare silence.

Super weird or super normal

“I know this will feel really weird at first. But this is just the way things are done in Finland and it’s completely normal here.

You see all the others’ kids’ naked bodies and they see yours. I promise you that here no one thinks that’s wrong.

Here no one thinks you need to hide and change clothes and shower in private.

Here people just don’t think that no one can see your body, or that you can’t see anyone else’s body. It’s just a body. We all have bodies and we all have different unique bodies and it’s just normal. No one here thinks it’s a big deal.

I know it will feel weird, it did for me too when I went to the girls’ side in the sauna place where we recently went to, together.”

In the United States, this, what I call “body-neutral” concept, for the lack of a better word, doesn’t exist—or I haven’t encountered it. Kids go to private bathrooms from the age of 3, sometimes even at younger ages. Some daycares don’t even change diapers (parent needs to drive there to go change the diaper), and for swimming, kids change and shower in their private stalls. You simply don’t see bodies without clothes, because it’s often considered “wrong”: they are your “private parts!” after all.

I understand that the American societal messaging is based on privacy, modesty and protection.

In Finland too, protection is a big deal, but beyond that, the mindset about bodies is very different: privacy and modesty are not needed as much when you have body neutrality. Bodies are not just immediately objectified. Bodies are considered non-sexual unless it’s in a grown-up romantic context.

In the Nordics, this sets the stage for more body positivity, lots of friendships between genders and more equal relationships between genders.

DISCLAIMER: In case it could be misunderstood that the Finnish body-neutral concept could confuse kids on how to protect oneself, it does not. Finns are also very serious about teaching kids to protect themselves. in fact, unlike in the US, explained my sister who is a daycare teacher in Helsinki, “it’s a part of what is officially taught for kids, all the time”. “We teach the kids that no one should touch the swimsuit area and we teach them to communicate their own boundaries very clearly .” Personally I take it so seriously, that besides just my husband and I guiding our kids, I also had my kids trained in establishing boundaries and protecting themselves by the best of the best in New York City.

Meeting with the Teacher

My first experience into how the American system deals with children and attitudes against bodies happened when one of my son’s was 3.

Alarmed, a teacher in my son’s nursery school in New York City asked to meet. I was informed that he had been banned from bathroom breaks with the other 3-year-olds. He could still use the bathroom, for sure, but only a private bathroom, alone, without other kids around, with a teacher supervising right outside.

Curious as any 3-year-old, he had peeked under another private toilet door. The toddlers had started using private bathrooms as they had graduated from the communal “potty training” room used during the 2-year-olds program.

I was asked to seriously focus on making him understand that he has to respect that bodies are private, and that no one is allowed to see another person’s “private parts”.

It was as if normal developmental curiosity of a 3-year-old had suddenly been branded voyeurism!

I asked for tips. I was kindly told that it was not the school’s job to train the child in this, it was the family’s aka the mom’s.

In Finland this would not have been a big deal, per my sister who is a kindergarten teacher, or per all my boys’ current teachers: for one, you don’t even have private spaces like that at 3 years old. With the Nordic approach, this type of stigma and shame when it comes to the human body doesn’t generally exist. In the United States, the best you can do is to try fulfill kids’s desire to know and learn about bodies from pictures.

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Just a Body

In the Finnish language, there’s yet another untranslatable word, “nakuna”. If you translated it directly, it means “nude”. But it does not mean “nude” at all. As every parent can relate to, it describes that moment when kids despite your coaxing refuse to wear clothes, and just want to run around, kind of free, ideally somewhere outside in nature. The way parents in the Nordic regions respond to moments like this tend to be very different from parents elsewhere: “go for it.”

Once you get closer to puberty, you, at some point, decide that you have outgrown the “nakuna” thing, and then that’s that.

The body-neutral attitudes in Scandinavia reach everywhere—for example, breastfeeding in public is not weird here at all; everyone is able to separate a breastfeeding breast from a breast in a romantic context.

When it comes to parenting, I asked my social circle here for insights into how this all comes across in practice.

Not a Big Deal

“My boys go to the sauna and swimming with their cousins, girls and boys, all the time, “nakuna”!” says my friend Jenni, describing the kids as in between ages 9-13.

“Up until the age of 6 and 7, we don’t divide the kids by gender. When we go swimming, they all go to the changing room together,“ described one of my son’s daycare teachers. “The kids sometimes point out that ‘oh you got a different part!’ but it’s so normal, that they don’t think it’s anything weird or special.”

She also repeated what my sister had told me already, that all daycare teachers are trained to educate the kids continuously about body safety and protection. But through these practices, they also teach them about body-neutrality.

“I also consider kids this age as pretty gender-neutral; my daughter is also “nakuna” with friends in the summer all the time,” says my friend, a father, whose girl frequently plays tag, and rough and tumbles with my boys.

On a recent playdate, his daughter and my boys were running around the apartment, and suddenly all of them had no shirt on, and just continued running. My boys frequently take their shirt off inside because they are so active they get too hot. And she had just followed suit.

My friend, the father, didn’t even blink: “My daughter is very capable of setting her own boundaries; you can see that here they are just playing as kids, not as “girls”
and “boys”. After they slowed down the running, and got cooler, all of them had their shirts back on.

Right & wrong

I’m still stumped at how to teach my kids what the Nordic parents consider a healthy, neutral relationship with bodies and a more gender-equal attitude—especially when we’ll be back in the US. But at least I can start by maintaining a constant conversation , teaching them about the cultural differences. It is almost like walking on a parenting tight rope between two cultures. But I think it can be done by experiencing both. And the swimming class was a great start.

“Kunnon loylyt”

I asked my boys what the swimming pool experience was like. “Did it feel really weird?”

“Yeah,” both nodded. But they also added that, with the other 7-8 year old boys, they all hit the sauna in the dressing room after swimming, and “heittivat hyvat loylyt” (=yet one more untranslatable sentence: they threw water on the hot stones creating a wave of heat—something kids this age in Finland are trusted to do unsupervised).

Just like typical Nordic guys in a sauna. And no big deal.

Now, leave a comment! Is anyone else dealing with two different cultural backgrounds in parenting no matter the topic?

x Annabella