Sunsuits - Do My Children Need Them?

My kids all wear sunsuits. They wear sun hats, their sunglasses in the car and I have a big tub of sunscreen by the back door. Here’s why.

I spent Summers of the 1970s in a crocheted white string bikini. In the hottest part of the day we rubbed olive oil into our skin and lay down on beach towels to bake in the sun. Sometimes we used mirrors to amplify the sun and bounce the rays around. We did this all through the summer holidays, every year. Our aim was to get as tanned as possible. We burnt, we peeled; stripping layers of skin down like old paint to expose pink raw skin underneath. We played sport in the sun; midday on the pitch blinking into the glare, stripes of zinc swiped across the cheeks like war paint; pale whiskers on a burnt face at the end of the day. We went on holiday to hot places with the ambition to return to school a darker shade than our friends. Sunsuits? Never heard of them.

Skin cancer is most commonly diagnosed in the 50-60 age group. All those growing up in the 1970s are now doing the math. Skin cancer is racing towards my generation of sun worshippers like a death train. Malignant melanoma incidence rates in Britain have more than quadrupled since the 1970s. Over the last twenty-five years, rates of malignant melanoma in Britain have risen faster than any other common cancer.

A number of the sunbathing friends of my childhood have had bits cut away from them, and yes, two have died of melanoma.

Parents of the new millennium know far more than my parents knew about cause and effect of sun damage. The research has been done, results published and government campaigns have rolled out for years. It is an accepted fact that sun exposure is the main cause of malignant melanoma and that sunburn in a child vastly increases the chance of skin cancer in later life. Every parent in the western world must be familiar with the caution: “Slip, Slop, Slap”.

Would I encourage my children to smother themselves in olive oil and put them out to roast like bit of meat on a barbeque? Of course not.

But here’s the dilemma. I still love the sun. I love beach holidays with my kids, we’re the first in the surf and the last out. I dream of a house with a pool. I like water; boating, body surfing, a hose fight in the back garden on a hot day. Water and sun are a magic combination; they lift my spirits like nothing else.

I first saw sunsuits on a bunch of Australian kids in Fiji. It was late afternoon, but the sun still had potential to burn. My kids had been swimming, reluctantly smothered in the recommended two handfuls of sunscreen, sand sticking to them and sunscreen reapplied in bucketfuls every time they towelled off. Meanwhile I had been lectured by a surfer about chemical damage of sunscreen to the coral reefs. I did point out to him it was organic sunscreen, but took his point. The Australian kids in their sunsuits were first in and last out of the water and their mother looked very relaxed.

Sunsuits are made of UV protective swimwear fabric, usually fast drying nylon/lycra and traditionally cover from the elbows to neck to knees, with a zip up front or back, wetsuit style. You can get longer ones but they appear quite hot; the shorter ones cover the hard to get areas like shoulders and back and kids can apply sunscreen on lower arms and legs easily. A good one will carry the UPF50+ rating.

All the kids I’ve seen at the beach seem to enjoy their sunsuits, and my own kids take them for granted now. A good suit is lightweight with low moisture retention so they are comfortable and fast drying. The one piece style means they don’t ride up or slip off and they offer a bit of modesty as well as sun protection.

I’m glad my kids wear sunsuits rather than olive oil. It may be too late for my generation, but we can do our best to derail the skin cancer train before it hits our kids.