Barefoot Children in Westernized World

I am a mom of seven who read your book and switched to barefoot running about six months post-partum with my sixth child, as a last-ditch effort to heal some wicked plantar fasciitis I attribute to too much-too soon in order to run a marathon (in shoes) 3 months post-partum. I am never going back to shoes, and our older six have been barefoot – and run regularly on pavement since they are homeschooled and only wear shoes about one day a week (sometimes to church, but not even always there!) — We also require them to run a few times a week, barefoot to keep their form correct. We lived in Hawaii for three years which contributed to barefoot children, and have just never gone back.

I wonder – might you know of any studies which would like to document the feet of children living and running barefoot in the modern world? We’re a normal bunch of people – Navy family living in South Carolina – with the exception that they almost never wear shoes and can outpace my husband and myself on any terrain. I only thought to ask because I was sitting here admiring the awesome shape of my children’s feet and wondered if anyone had studied the effects of shoes (or lack thereof) on children (I assume any exclusively barefoot children exist mostly in third world countries, so the study wouldn’t be comparing apples to apples unless barefoot children in a Westernized country existed, like mine.) Thanks for all your hard work to bring us all back to barefoot!