Kristen Bell says she 'waits for the stink' before washing her children

• Kristen Bell was on "The View" with her husband Dax Shepard Tuesday.
• She said the pair wait for their children to "stink" before washing them.
• "Sometimes five, six days go along," Shepard added.

Kristen Bell has entered the child washing discourse.

On Tuesday, Bell was a guest on "The View" with her husband Dax Shepard, and the pair were asked what they thought about Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis revealing that they only wash their children when they see dirt on them during an episode of Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast.

"I'm a big fan of waiting for the stink," Bell said. "Once you catch a whiff, that's biology's way of letting you know you need to clean it up. There's a red flag. Honestly, it's just bacteria; once you get bacteria you gotta be like: 'Get in the tub or the shower.' So I don't hate what [Kutcher and Kunis] are doing. I wait for the stink."

Shepard added that he and Bell previously bathed their children every night as part of a bedtime routine, but as the children grew older, they stopped.

"Somehow they just started going to sleep on their own without their routine," he said, "and we had to start saying [to each other] like, 'Hey, when was the last time you bathed them?' Sometimes five, six days go along."

"Yeah, we forget," Bell added.

Parental hygiene has become a popular topic since Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis shared that they don't bathe their children every day, and limit soap for themselves on Shepard's podcast. During the podcast episode, Kutcher said: "Now, here's the thing: If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there's no point."

Kunis added: "I don't wash my body with soap every day. But I wash pits and tits and holes and soles."

Kutcher said he washed only his "armpits and crotch daily and nothing else ever."

"I have a tendency to throw some water on my face after a workout just to get all the salts and the whatever out," he said, adding: "I got a bar of Lever 2000 that just delivers every time. Nothing else."

The American Academy of Dermatology's guidelines recommends that children aged 6 to 11 should bathe at least once or twice a week. Some geneticists have said young children require some exposure to dirt and small doses of viruses and infections to develop their immune systems.

The academy's guidelines say that teens, however, should shower or bathe daily.

Daniel Ganjian, a pediatrician at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, told Kelly Burch for Insider that Kutcher and Kunis's approach to bathing was reasonable for younger children.

"Our body makes natural oils to protect our hair and skin," he said. "It's good to keep those natural oils going."

He added: "Typically, as adults, we take daily showers because of smell and body odor, but small kids don't have that smell and body odor," he said. Usually, body odor hits when kids start entering puberty, about age 10, Ganjian said.