"Genuine enthusiastm for playing doctor with grown-ups? Very rare, I say, and not because of shaming."

When you say things like that, I kinda have doubts about your claims to parenthood.

Playing doctor is about the child satisfying his/her curiosity about anatomy with a willing living model. Young children don't magically think that only another child can satisfy this curiosity. And a very common target of the question are mum and dad. Most parents in our society are shamed enough that they pass on their shame by rebuffing the child's curiosity.

Now I came along too late as a stepdad.

But Benjamin Spock attests to his son trying to touch his penis. Daniel Cohn-Bendit attests to the LG at his nursery school trying to touch his penis. And my own Ex said that each of the girls, when they were the same age ( without knowing about the other ) had asked if she could strip and show them where they came out of when they were babies. Instead of shaming them, she swallowed her hesitance and showed the girls what their parts will look like when they become adults. Even most libruls might just point the girl to a book with a clinical photo of a dehumanized detached vagina, rather than showing them that real adults have the same parts they do attached to a person they can identify with.

Like I say, I showed up years later, once their curiosity had moved-on.

And, needless to say, but apparently necessary for you, throughout much of human history and across a vast spectrum of cultures anatomic curiosity can be satisfied by simply being around in mixed company; in the longhouse, in the communal baths of Japan, in.... well, everywhere but here and now.

I know that you doubt the common experiences everyone takes for granted. Spock wrote about this, and through his practice believed that it was the norm for parents that their very young children would approach the adult directly to "play doctor."

Maybe there's some shaming going on in the exceptions to the rule that you're too close to see?

Dante