Doctors say you should wash your bedsheets once a week, but how often should you bathe your kids? One Utah mom of six said twice a week is enough, and the internet begged to differ.
As Arielle Tschinkel reported on the website Motherly, Sharon Johnson recently shared her household management tips on TikTok. They include requiring her children (ages 4 to 13) to “check out” laptops and limiting time on them to two hours a week. Johnson’s children also aren’t allowed cellphones before the age of 12, have to do chores and aren’t allowed sleepovers.
Many of her tips are countercultural, but what really got people riled up was what Johnson said about bathing. She said her children take showers or baths on Sundays and Wednesdays, except if they get unusually dirty. “If you need a bath in between, then absolutely, but otherwise, that’s good enough,” Johnson said.
Some people responded by calling this “unsanitary” and saying everyone, including children, need to wash themselves once a day.
“Wow, people are really passionate about how often other people’s children should be showering,” Johnson said in a follow-up video, in which she explained that she lives “in an incredibly dry climate” and that her children’s skin would be “raw” if they showered or bathed every day. She concluded by saying, “Please keep the comments kind and civil, otherwise I will just block and delete you.”
A writer for Today.com took up the controversy, saying, “Bathing is a radical topic, apparently.” The article by Elise Solé noted that how often celebrities bathe their kids was a subject of contention in 2021, when Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis said they didn’t bathe their children every day.
Kutcher has said, “If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point.”
As it turns out, both Kutcher and Johnson are right. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, children aged 6 to 11 need baths once or twice a week, or more often if they’ve been swimming or gotten sweaty or muddy.
Toddlers enjoy playing in baths (and their parents may love how they smell when they emerge), but two to three baths a week are generally enough at that age, according to Whattoexpect.com and several medical websites.
Tweens and teens, however, should be showering daily, the American Academy of Dermatology said.
And for babies? Per the Healthy Children website of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization says a newborn shouldn’t be bathed until 24 hours after birth, “or waiting at least 6 hours if a full day isn’t possible for cultural reasons.” The vernix that coats a newborn’s skin is a natural moisturizer and “may have antibacterial properties.” After that, “Three baths per week during baby’s first week may be enough. Bathing more frequently can dry out your baby’s skin.”
So that should close the discussion on the bathing practices in the Johnson household, and we can move on to what’s even more controversial: whether she should pay her older kids to take care of their siblings. It’s not their job, so of course they should be paid, she said. Commenters, assemble.