Bring the Kids
A special Father's Day event at Othership Williamsburg, plus Alisa Cardenas on the gentle rewards of welcoming children into the bathing space.
Join us this Father's Day as we team up with Othership for a family morning in Williamsburg. Softer heat, live music, tiny snowballs, and yes, freezies. As a CoB subscriber, you get a little something extra — use code FATHERSDAY15 for 15% off tickets. Valid for the next week. Grab yours here. Read more below! 👇
We’re also republishing one of our favorite pieces from Alisa Cardenas of Howl at the Moon Sauna Co. Consider it the reading material for why you should absolutely bring your children into the sauna.
Father’s Day at Othership: A Morning for the Whole Family
Sunday, June 21st · 8–11 AM · Othership Williamsburg
This Father’s Day, Othership Williamsburg and Culture of Bathe-ing are co-hosting a half-day family event built around something we genuinely believe in: bringing kids back into bathing culture.
What’s happening
On Sunday, June 21st, Othership is opening their Williamsburg space for families with children ages 7 to 17. Softer heat, a warmer cold plunge, and a morning designed for dads and kids to actually hang out together, in one of the best settings there is.
Come anytime between 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM and move at your own pace. Children must be accompanied by a parent throughout.
🎵 Live Music — Settle in to the sound of a live musician setting the vibe all morning long.
✨ Fun Activations — Hands-on activities and surprises, from tiny snowballs to a scent-making station, designed for the whole family.
🧊 Treats for Kids — Ice-cold freezies waiting at the front. You’ve earned it.
📅 Sunday, June 21st ⏰ 8:00 AM – 11:00 AM 📍 Othership Williamsburg
🎟️ Tickets – $69 Get tickets here. Each ticket covers one parent + one child.
CoB subscribers: Use code FATHERSDAY15 for 15% off.
Why we’re doing this
In Finland, babies are welcomed into the sauna within their first year of life. In Japan, Turkey, Estonia, and Latvia, the bathhouse has always been an intergenerational space — a place for cleansing, yes, but also for connection, presence, and passing something wordless between generations.
Somewhere along the way, “adult-only” became the default. We’re pushing back on that. And Father’s Day felt like exactly the right moment to start.
For more on the philosophy behind this event, we asked our collaborator Alisa Cardenas, founder of Howl at the Moon Sauna Co. and one of the sharpest voices in bathing culture, to share her thinking. Her essay is below.
School of Steam: Life Lessons in the Bathhouse
By Alisa Cardenas, Howl at the Moon Sauna Co.
We begin in water
Before we take our first steps or speak our first words, we swim. Humans are born into water. We kick, stretch, and swirl suspended in the warm, quiet dark of the womb. Water is part of life and where we come from.
Somehow, even as children grow and become little wild-hearted people, they remember the comfort of water. Splashing in the bath, puddle jumping, running through sprinklers, diving into swimming pool or lake, kids everywhere associate bathing with play, freedom and presence.
Cultural inheritance of bathing rituals
Just as we know water, we know heat. Being held in warmth is woven into memory before we can even speak. Communal sweat bathing has been a way of life and family ritual across time and cultures. In many parts of the world, heat is introduced early, gently and lovingly. In Finland, babies are welcomed into the sauna within their first year of life. Toddlers sit in buckets of water on the floor of the sauna to keep cool, while parents and grandparents watch intently. Kids and adults enjoying mild heat and a little löyly together. In other bathing cultures like Latvian and Lithuanian pirts, Japanese onsen, Turkish hamams, and even Roman thermae, early bathing was, and still is, a sacred practice. One that includes cleansing, spiritual purification, grounding, and ancestral connection.
What happens when we bring children in?
Bringing children back into bathing culture might just be a profound act of reclaiming a slower, more attuned way of being that is deeply necessary in today. Within the warmth of the sauna, children begin to cultivate a vital language of consent and boundary-setting, learning to honor their own sensations and feelings. Social bathing becomes a living classroom for body wisdom, where the rhythms of breath, heat, and presence teach them how to navigate discomfort, connection, and self-awareness.
When children are invited into bathing spaces alongside adults, they’re soaking in powerful, unspoken lessons about how to move through the world. Kids witness the diversity of bodies; real, lived-in, imperfect, and worthy. They witness how space is shared, how stillness or conversation flows between people. These are seeds of empathy and social awareness. When we model reverence for our own body and for the people around us, children begin to do the same.
“When children are invited into bathing spaces alongside adults, they’re soaking in powerful, unspoken lessons about how to move through the world. Kids witness the diversity of bodies; real, lived-in, imperfect, and worthy.”
Of course, it’s not always serene. There will be unauthorized splashing, running on the pool deck, tantrums, and tested limits (of adults and children alike). But isn’t that exactly what life is?
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
At some point in modern bathing history, age restrictions crept in and “adult-only” became the default for many spas and saunas. Whether out of liability or longing for silence, the message was clear: children don’t belong here. But in doing so, we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We sanitized the sacred and replaced presence with policies. Perhaps the rules were born of good intentions of safety, relaxation, and boundaries. In America at least, they might also be rooted in discomfort: our unease with nudity, the unpredictability of parenting in public, or possibly the awkwardness of communal vulnerability. In a culture obsessed with productivity and solitude, we’ve undervalued the slow, layered beauty of intergenerational spaces.
Reclaiming the bathhouse for all ages
Not every bathhouse needs a “Toddler Tuesday,” but what if we opened a few more doors? What if sauna sessions were designed with families in mind? What if we revisited those arbitrary hot tub age limits? After all, the hot tub at the YMCA isn’t exactly a temple of zen, so why are we pretending kids would ruin the mood?
Let’s dream bigger. Right now, many wellness spaces are adult-only sanctuaries. In some cases, rightfully so. But what we’re talking about isn’t removing those spaces, it’s making room alongside them. Let’s acknowledge that accessibility across age and family matters, and the future of wellness and bathing must hold space for complexity, not just comfort
Imagine family-centered wellness festivals where sauna and wild swimming aren’t off-limits to little ones and their parents. Imagine teen recovery centers where sauna becomes a rite of grounding and self-trust. Coming-of-age ceremonies that celebrate presence over pressure, and help young people build body awareness, resilience, and ritual.
Wellness shouldn’t always require you to disconnect from your kids to connect with yourself. Let’s aim for a slower, more intentional way forward that invites everyone to belong.
Alisa Cardenas, Founder, Howl at the Moon Sauna Co.
@howlatthemoonsaunaco
We’d love to hear from you - please send a DM, or email hello@cultureofbathe-ing.com
I love this! A clarifying question- do all kids have to be out by 11am? Or as long as we arrive in that window are they able to stay later? For the preteens and teens, these are early hours, so arriving between 10-11 may be more realistic for us. Thanks for letting us know.