Lots of parents worry that exposing their kids to casual nudity around the house, or allowing them to sleep in the parental bed, may have a disturbing impact on the child's sexual development. And over the years, a parade of psychoanalysts, child psychologists, therapists and other self-styled experts have stepped forward to offer advice to parents on the subject.

Freudians have suggested that kids exposed to parental nudity-even kids as young as six months to a year- might be terribly worried by the sexual fantasies and frustrations this evokes and perhaps even develop Oedipal problems as a result. (King Oedipus, of course, murdered his father and married his mother, and this conflict-where one parent is considered a potential lover, the other a rival- is thought to be a key phase of development among very young children, at least in Freudian theory.)

Other therapists have pointed out that ifparents go to great lengths to cover themselves, children get the implicit message that there's something shameful about the body. And by repeatedly covering up some "forbidden" part ofthem¬selves, a parent may actually be calling greater attention to it - making the child obsessively curious about what's being hidden. If the parents were a bit more casual about nudity, they say, the child wouldn't be so interested. These therapists worry that by being too modest, parents communicate nothing but discom¬fort and anxiety about their sexuality, and this could lead to problems with adult sexual development when the children are grown.

A few other observers have expressed the opinion that, whatever your decision about nudity in front ofthe kids, the most important thing is that you feel comfortable about it. If you go out of your way to let your kids see you naked but you don't feel comfortable about it, the discomfort will be communicated to the kids. It's better to find your own - and your kids' -level of comfort, and let that be your guide, they say.