This week a friend and I went to visit another friend’s fourth baby. We oohed and aahed over the boy. Peachy and blue-eyed, he was cute. But the three of us have 12 children between us, and regrettably, our interest in the poor thing didn’t last more than five minutes.

Our interest in our friend’s newly-renovated apartment, on the other hand, lasted much longer. In the middle of the Upper East Side, in a non-descript postwar building, she had blasted walls left and right to create a fabulous loft space. There were low-slung contemporary couches, high-gloss walls, shag rugs, and wide-beamed wooden floors. The walls were hung with photographs by Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Ruff. This apartment is just right, I thought to myself.

I wandered around, taking in the details, and moved to take a closer look at the dining room table. I looked up at a large photograph that hung on the wall behind the table – and found myself face to face with an enormous naked man in repose.

“Look what’s behind your dining room table!” I squealed, as if I had never seen a naked man before. “Are you crazy?” I asked. “What do your girls make of this?” I continued, without giving her a second to respond.

My friend laughed at my frenzied response to the photograph, taken by a British artist, Sam Taylor Wood. “They don’t even notice it,” she said of her three young girls. “My grandmother, though, is horrified.”

She is not alone. Exposure to adult nudity is one thing many parenting experts agree on. Too much – some might say any – is a bad thing. The photograph would certainly be a big no-no, as would bathing with your children.

“If you want to take a bath or shower with your baby or toddler, that’s fine. But really any time after that, certainly by the time your child is four or five – even if you’re a mom taking a bath with your daughter or a father and son, you’re opening up a can of worms,” an Upper East Side psychologist told me.

“Let’s assume you can handle the questions about the differences in development and anatomy. And let’s assume you can handle the occasional curious grope from your young child. Even if you handle all these things correctly, you still can’t prevent your child from feeling perhaps overly-stimulated. Or maybe they feel inadequate about what their body looks like. Or maybe they’re going to be desensitized to things that should feel special and private,” he continued.

He listed several more practical reasons why parental nudity should be limited: Children are more comfortable learning about genital anatomy from siblings and friends, modesty is practiced in our society and should be learned at home, and children should understand, for their own safety, that certain parts of their body are private.

Just how far should a parent go to prevent their children from catching them in the buff?

“Take your cues from your kids,” one head of a nursery school told me. “You don’t want your children to think that you’re ashamed about your body. So I wouldn’t hide in the closet or avoid a joint shower when there is no other option. But that said, I would close the door when you are going to the bathroom. I would try to shower and get changed without the kids around. And when your kids are uncomfortable being naked in front of other kids, or their siblings, or other adults, or you, then tell them that they are old enough to shower and change on their own.”

And what about the photograph? What about a nude sketch, or a naked statue?

“I don’t want to sound like some conservative nut,” the psychologist said, “but I would rather err on the safe side when it comes to all this stuff. Let’s assume the girls really don’t notice it. I would venture that at some point they will. What about their friends? Won’t one of them notice it soon? Someone is likely to point and giggle, or ask questions that she won’t be prepared to answer. But I’m not saying that this is going to traumatize anyone.”

Usually when so many experts are in unison, it seems hard to support any other position. But I can’t help but point out that very few parents I know seem to heed the experts’ advice, despite being aware of it.

“Neither one of us tries to walk around naked,” a mother of two boys, 11 and 9, and a girl, 6, said. “But we have no problem if the kids see us naked. And I love to take a bath with my daughter and my boys shower with my husband. I think it’s natural and don’t care what anyone says.”

Another parent of three agrees: “It’s so American and puritanical to worry about your kid being exposed to your body or some art that has nudity in it. Believe me, in Europe the parents aren’t worrying about damaging their child by showering with them, or taking them to see some old masters. We’re a country of prudes,” she said.

Or maybe we’re just a country with prudish parenting experts.

sarasberman@aol.com