"Well, my boyfriend's son is 6 years old, and you wonder at what age you should stop walking around nude. Every morning he comes into the bedroom, and you're just nude. But he doesn't look twice; he doesn't think about it yet. I just toss and turn too much when I sleep, and if I'm in clothes, I get all twisted up."
—Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank, 35, in Marie Claire's November issue

Is Hilary Swank being refreshingly uninhibited, or disturbingly immodest?

On the one hand, the first humans presumably lived nude, leaving us to believe that children saw naked adults all the time and evolved just fine. On the other hand, in U.S. culture today, nudity often carries sexual overtones and, even when innocent, can lead to misunderstandings. To find out more about the possible effects of adult nudity on children, we talked to child psychiatrist Elizabeth Berger, author of Raising Kids with Character.

iVillage: What are the implications of a child seeing a nude adult?
Elizabeth Berger: There is a huge amount of opinion on this subject—and very little in the way of actual empirical research to back up the emotion and controversy on one side or the other. If you look at the world as a whole, there is extraordinary variety in terms of bodies and sexuality and what different times and different places have considered appropriate for children. With the ancient Greeks, adult men had sex with young boys. It was part of their culture. You see everything under the sun about cultural ideas of children's bodies, adults' bodies, and who has access to what bodies.

iVillage: If you're divorced with children, could being naked around a child affect custody?
Berger: The courts and the statutes and what's considered neglect of a child or abuse of a child—all of this is in a state of flux. We don't have a coherent science. This is an area in which people have fiery opinions without a whole lot to back it up. Certainly the context of, "I'm an 11-year-old, my mother's drunk boyfriend comes in and exposes himself to me"—that's abuse. But next door there's a family of hard-working, committed, responsible, highly ethical people who just happen to walk around naked among each other. I assure you there are families like that. If you follow such families over time, they don't seem to have any disturbances in their personalities or their sexualities. They're not feeling like this is an abusive home. What counts is what it means to the child, consciously and unconsciously.

iVillage: Could the nudity make the biological parent, who is not present, get upset?
Berger: It could lead to all kinds of misinterpretations and confusions. It seems like a lit cigarette thrown in a dry barn.

iVillage: What about nudity might cause problems?
Berger: You can make the child feel helpless. Here the grown-up has all this impressive equipment, and the child is incompletely formed. It makes the child feel envious.

iVillage: It is psychologically okay for a child to be around naked adults?
Berger: The answer is speculative because we really don't have a research answer. Cigarettes cause cancer, but does seeing your mother naked cause you to be mixed up? We don't know...Generally, the medical community and people who treat children in our culture tend to have a superstitious belief that modesty with regard to watching the sex act or seeing naked adults is a good thing for children and adolescents.

iVillage: What do you think?
Berger: I do happen to know that there are many moral, ethical people in America who seem to feel that walking nude in their own household among everyone who's in the house is fine, in the manner presented by Hilary Swank. It is my personal superstitious belief that our culture is one in which there is more modesty, and I believe there is a consensus among child psychiatrists and psychologists—and I don't think anyone has done research on this—that would suggest that in some not-very-well-defined world, this can make a child anxious, or over-stimulated or confused. I know that cigarettes will give you cancer. I do not know in the same way that being naked in front of your boyfriend's 6-year-old is bad for him. There's something about it that does not seem in sync with the therapy culture of today, of my generation. Is this known absolutely? No, it isn't.

iVillage: How does a child's age factor in?
Berger: The 2-year-old has a developmental need to accidentally discover human anatomy. This is why all 2-year-olds will barge in at the wrong time. The superstition of this culture says age 3 or 4 is a divider at which point your son walks in on you, and you're completely naked, you go "Oof," and pick up your nightie and cover yourself. [But] I personally know socially—not in a professional way—families [made up] of the most high-minded and straight-laced ethical individuals in which there is extraordinary nakedness at home across genders and ages, and I do not observe the slightest problem.

iVillage: Being modest isn't going to hurt, right?
Berger: It's not going to hurt. And many children are quite prudish and feel better if the adults are, too. But I also think that it's important to have empathy for the child's lead, and if a child seems to be dying to have a conversation about anatomy or physiology, the parent in a sensitive way should always be attuned to the child's need for information and to respond to it, honestly.

iVillage: You can't count on a child saying, "Would you please cover up in bed?"
Berger: A child who's dependent on grown-ups is likely to be muddled and confused and not have the courage of his convictions to speak up.

iVillage: So we can't assume that if a child stays silent, he's fine with the nudity?
Berger: Correct.

iVillage: Hilary Swank isn't the only American to sleep in the nude. What would be your advice for the others—keep pajamas by the bed?
Berger: My advice would be to be consistent. The issue is, in our culture, taking your clothes off has to do with sexual thoughts because we wear clothes. In other cultures that are clothed differently, it may not have that meaning. Anthropologically, everything under the sun has been normal for some group, somewhere. You have to belong to your own time and place.

Do you think it's okay to be nude in front of a young child? Share your thoughts in the comments below.