We took the whole family to a local playground yesterday with a "water feature": basically fake geysers, water sprays, little lake areas, etc. It was awesome, and Charlie had the time of his life! (Olive slept the whole time.)

While we were there, I saw a little girl (maybe 3 years old) who was having the time of her life in the water too. She stood out because it was just her and the water.. her clothes and diaper were somewhere else I guess. She was the only one there that was stark naked.

I immediately had two reactions:

1) I felt like I could be arrested just for witnessing child nudity. I guess that's a sad commentary on how things are these days. But in any case, I quickly looked away and shifted my back to the little girl and her father (who was standing right next to her).

2) In the Philippines (where my parents live in a remote beach village), there is an endless supply of crushing poverty and it is much more common to see kids with no clothes on at all. If there was a free water feature at a local playground, half the kids in the village would be there completely naked. My second reaction was to think how natural it is to be naked while enjoying cold water under a blistering hot sun.

I wasn't sure how to reconcile these two reactions. My American side thought the father shouldn't let his 3yo daughter be naked in front of hundreds of other people. But my immigrant side thought that it wasn't that big a deal... that this was more of an American prude thing than anything else.

What do you think: would you let your LO run around naked at a playground with a water feature? Do you think kids should be able to be naked in public more, or does America have it right?