I took my six-year-old son into the female change rooms at his swimming school the other day. A woman stood there holding a towel across an open shower, obscuring her daughter from view. Though she'd not put it up because of our arrival, she was nonetheless, unhappy with my son's presence. Was her shielded daughter likely to be corrupted? I'd always seen naked kids as innocuous and somehow neutral, so her reaction seemed unnecessary and offensive.

The routines and rituals of everyday life demand various states of nakedness. Bathing, dressing, sleeping. Intimate encounters in the bedroom. Dashes through the sprinkler in summer.

Cath Moore: The routines and rituals of everyday life demand various states of nakedness, but it can still feel awkward.

But within the constructs of religion and art, the naked human form has been both legitimised and demonised, depending on what it affirms or challenges. In many artistic expressions nudity reflects philosophical and aesthetic ideals. The naked human form is commonly revered through mediums such as sculpture. Photography brings a startling, unapologetic realness to the naked body that is often politicised or drawn into ethical arguments, especially if it involves the depiction of children. Famous images such as Adam and Eve reflect sexual desire as an inherent facet of the human experience.

Different cultures have different connections to nudity. In Germany for example, nudity is often embraced as a normal, natural state of being. In summer you'll see people sunbathing in public parks and pools with their tops off. I remember sitting on the grass in Frankfurt with my German partner, ironically exposed by my un-nakedness. I tried to liberate my skin, but got awkwardly flustered and tangled in my top half way through. "Who cares?" my partner said. Evidently I did, strangely bound by this puritanical modesty. It seemed to me that the locals knew who they were, with or without clothes.

My mother-in-law certainly does. The first time I met her we ended up nude in a sauna together, along with an eclectic mix of other naked senior citizens. I know about three phrases in German, none of them helpful in this kind of scenario. So I sat there for 20 minutes nodding and sweating in silence. I desperately hoped I might have an of out-of-body experience so I could escape.

We're told to lie skin-to-skin with our babies. We appreciate the naked form within the artistic frame. It's a pity that the older we get, the more we shy away from life as we were led into it; naked and unapologetically content to be so.

It's 10 years since my nude encounter with Germany. But I still get photos of my parents-in-law hanging out with their friends on European nudist beaches. And despite averting my eyes every time a text arrives, I admire their abandonment – of clothing and neuroses alike. I did manage to skinny dip on an empty beach in Tasmania once. Mostly because no-one else was there to witness this unlikely feat, but also because I realised my partner was still right. Who cares?