A mom of six started “Bath Gate 2024” on TikTok when revealing she only mandates that her kids take showers twice a week.
Sharon Johnson, a mom in Utah with six children (ages 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 13), creates TikTok content about mental health and motherhood. In a February video, Johnson shared her strategies for managing a large household — and one stood out as especially controversial.
"Bath and shower days are Sunday and Wednesday," Johnson said in the video with almost 8 million views at publish time. "If you need a bath in between ... then absolutely, but otherwise, that's good enough."
TikTokers called Johnson a lazy and irresponsible parent.
- "Two days? I beg your pardon."
- "If someone told me I could only bathe TWO times a week ... I'm throwing hands."
- "'Everyone needs a daily bath. Why is this so hard to understand?"
- "How often are they allowed to brush their teeth? Once a week???"
- "Very unsanitary ... it should be a mandatory thing to take a shower at least once a day."
Others wrote, "If you're not dirty, it's a waste of water and time," "People just like proclaiming who is the cleanest of clean" and "The pediatrician said bath days a couple days a week is fine."
Bathing is a radical topic, apparently.
In 2021, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis said they weren't militant about bathing their children, then ages 6 and 4. "If you can see the dirt on them, clean them," Kutcher explained on the “Armchair Expert” podcast hosted by Dax Shepard. "Otherwise, there’s no point.” While Shepard and his wife Kristen Bell told TODAY they smell their kids' feet to determine if they need baths.
Johnson tells TODAY.com that she manages a large household by staying extremely organized. The two eldest are in full-time public school while she homeschools three of her other children. Her youngest starts kindergarten next year.
Johnson says the controversy, which she coined "Bath Gate 2024" on TikTok, is disappointing.
"(The topic) is really cultural and has a lot to do with how you were raised," she says. "If you live in the (hot) South, you might have to wash every single day and if you’ve never been to Utah or the West, you have no concept of how (weather) affects skin."
(The topic) is really cultural and has a lot to do with how you were raised."
Johnson added in another TikTok video: "We live in an incredibly dry climate and all of my kids have really sensitive skin. If they showered every single day, their skin would be so incredibly raw."
"People can't wrap their brains around the fact that others are different," says Johnson. "We live in a world where nuance doesn’t exist."
Johnson chose Wednesday because it's the middle of the week and Sunday because that's when the family formerly attended church. Bathing twice a week, she says, is just a guideline.
"Having that many little kids, you're like, 'When was the last time you bathed?'" she says. "It makes it easier to know that yes, people are bathing in between, but no matter what, you have two (mandatory baths)."
Johnson doesn't supervise her two eldest kids in the same way.
"I don't track their showers or remind them to bathe," she explains. "They have more autonomy. They know when they need to shower, like after gymnastics or soccer."
According to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, children between the ages of 6 and 11 can bathe daily but it's not mandatory. The association notes that kids need to bathe "at least once or twice a week" and when dirty, sweaty, after playing in water or if they have body odor.
Johnson shared other household rules in her video, some of which people called "unfair" and even "the worst thing ever."
- Recreational “tech time” is limited to one hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Johnson’s kids “check out” a family laptop, leaving a Post-it note in a drawer to indicate who used the device last.
- Children's allowances correlate to ages. If you're 8 years old, you get $8 and so forth. "We figure if our kids screw up with money, it's better to do it with $7 than with a credit card," Johnson tells TODAY.com.
- No sleepovers. "Then I don't have to decide who had a sleepover when, whose house is safe ... yes, we do late-night nights," she said in the video.
- Kids have the same two daily chores for a year. "No chore charts to keep track of, kids get really good at their chores (and) there's no moaning and complaining ..." Johnson said in the video. She tells TODAY.com that her younger kids don't get easier chores than their siblings; rather, her standards for proficiency grow with age. "I've had to lower my expectations for what our home looks like," she says.
- Older kids are paid to babysit. "Why? Because it's not their job to take care of their siblings," Johnson said in the video; she tells TODAY.com, "I never want my kids to resent having a big family."
- Each kid gets two extracurricular activities. "For now, this is all we can handle," she said in the video.
- Children get their first cell phone at age 12. "It's a 'starter phone' that makes calls and sends text messages but no internet access," she tells TODAY.com.
- Dinner is a rotating menu: The mom plans 14 different dinner options, which her family alternates every two weeks.
- No food allowed outside the kitchen.
- Arts and crafts are available 24/7 for bored children.
- Johnson gives herself a weekly night off to either meet friends, drive around and listen to music or sit in a coffee shop and read. "In those early years of motherhood, you can really lose yourself," she tells TODAY.com. "It's when I can be myself without expectations."
To Johnson, the household rules are all about relieving her mental load.
“That way, I can be present and enjoy my kids instead of constantly managing them,” she tells TODAY.com. “I want to hang out and play and in order to do that, I need systems so I don’t think about it.”