Last Sunday morning my husband and I were caught having a cuddle in bed by our eight-year-old daughter. And by cuddle I do actually mean cuddle. I'm not using it as a euphemism for being busted by the kids in flagrante delicto - although don't we all have one of those stories? No, Luke and I were merely taking advantage of having two kids sleeping in, so we snuggled and giggled and reconnected with one another. It may not sound like too momentous an occasion, but it did make me think about the different ways affection is displayed in families.

I must admit that Luke and I are not one of those PDA (Public Displays of Affection) couples. It may be due to 10 years of marriage but I also think it has to do with our natures. I like to blame him and I think he likes to blame me, but somewhere between having two babies 16 months apart and being without a bathroom for six months we kind of lost a measure of our touchy-feeliness. But now, with both kids in school and a fabulous renovation to warm our hearts on long winter nights we have regained a little of our cuddling mojo. It's nice.

So when we got 'caught' by our daughter - who was obviously a little surprised - it made me wonder about how the behaviour we exhibit in our relationship with our partner is absorbed by our kids. Growing up in a single-parent household during the seventies, PDAs were pretty thin on the ground. I vowed - like many Generation Xers - to be physically affectionate and demonstrative when I had kids of my own. And I hope that Indy and Levi both feel that they get the right quota of cuddles, kisses and declarations of love from me. Luke is also great at cuddling, kissing, tickling and wrestling both of our children and doesn't have any of the reticence that may have characterised dads of the previous generation. But do the kids think that this is the only cuddling going on in our house?

When I was a kid I had an uncle and aunt who were legendary for their PDAs. The bulk of my memories of them are from the time when they were newlyweds without kids of their own. Whenever my siblings and I had a sleepover with Uncle D and Aunty M we would hide around living room corners and watch as our uncle and aunt kissed passionately, cuddled, tickled and teased one another. If you happened to pop in to their bedroom in the morning to wake them for breakfast you would invariably find them fast asleep and spooning or otherwise intertwined with one another. They were great examples of love and affection and I remember hoping to marry a man who adored me the way my uncle seemed to adore my aunt.

As it turns out, my husband is cut from a different cloth than my uncle. But I love him and our life together, so it's fine by me. However, in recent times - and especially during the darkest days of our renovation when the main objective was claiming some personal space in our seriously compromised living quarters rather than draping ourselves over one another - I started to worry if my kids were receiving the right messages about intimate relationships. Would my daughter think that kisses and cuddles were not to be expected from her future partner? Would my son think it was usual for a wife to sit as far away from her husband as possible?

Happily, Luke and I have recovered and reconnected. As we made plans for a night out last weekend, and told the kids they were off to Nan and Pop's, Indy looked up at us shyly with her pre-teen take on the world and said, "Are you two going on a date?" I happily exclaimed, "Yes!" - glad that she was seeing us in that light. It's also why I was happy when she walked in on us the following morning talking and snuggled up together under our doona. She jumped up on our bed and we dragged her, giggling, into our cuddle zone. I felt relieved to know that in these, her very formative years she should retain a memory of her mum and dad in love and expressing it. Hopefully it will cancel out the memory (if she has one) of that other time, a few years back, when she walked in on us having a 'cuddle'.

Do you show affection to your partner when the kids are around? Do you think it is good for kids to see their parents being affectionate?