My family lives in one of these "clean freak" cultures of Europe, where there is a high priority placed, mostly by the heads of households, on maintaining the a

My family lives in one of these "clean freak" cultures of Europe, where there is a high priority placed, mostly by the heads of households, on maintaining the absolute pristine cleanliness of everything and staying out of the dirt. I've always resisted this, because my intuition is that kids who don't or can't get their hands dirty because of neuroses inherited from their parents are sick in other ways - but its interesting to have some scientific reasoning behind this. So its like the whole "clean freaks" culture that is so prevalent in the west (coz: pharmaceuticals gotta sell soap too, yo.) is at the root cause of this - very interesting. Will be interesting to see a followup to the research in a year or so and see just what is recommended - but again, that old wives tale that so many of us 'un-clean masses' propose - that we get our kids out in the mud with other kids for exercise and fun - seems to have been proven true.