Someone please explain this one to me...

[Cerveza]

... maybe I'm just too old to get it.

Children (those who are under the age of 18) getting piercings?

Ok, I'm not that old - yes girls want to get their ears pierced. I can see that. But at what age?

I see BABIES WITH EAR RINGS!

Now who is that for? The parents, that's who. They mutilate their babies so the look cute. Causing intentional pain to a child is abuse and these parents should be dealing with CPS not showing off their babies to their friends.

I have more... I'll hold on to the thoughts for now

[SunTigress]

I'll tell you why my parents WISHED they had pierced my sisters and my ears when we were babies

When we were like 4 (me) and 9 (my sister), we didn't take care of them like we should have, and they got super infected. My parents had to SIT on us in order to get the earrings out of our ears.

A friend of our, however, got her kids pierced as infants. They really can't feel it (it's true, I was there. They didn't even budge). She was able to take care of them and keep them clean, so they were completely healed by the time the kids were old enough to notice them.

[12TimesOver]

We made our daughter (now 9) wait until we felt like she understood that it would hurt to get her ears pierced and that she had to take care of the new piercings while they healed (cleaning, turning, etc). She decided at 5 years old that she was ready and asked for them for her 6th b-day so we lived up to our end of the bargain and took her to have them done. She did really well taking care of them and we kept a boundry of no "dangly" earrings until recently.

A year later she was asking for a second piercing and we told her "no" but that if she still wanted it for her 10th birthday we would discuss it then. She now has a date lined up with Mom to get the second piercing in August on her b-day.

After that she's done until she's 16 when we will let her make her own choices regarding piercings (to an extent of course). Don't ask why these specific ages, they just felt "right" at the time and seemed to be a good balance between letting our daughter express herself while maintaining some boundaries and appropriateness.

I'm not at all a fan of piercing babies, it seems abusive to me and I'm not sure why it's allowed.

X

[Cerveza]

Waiting till an age when the child knows and accepts the responsibilities.... novel idea it seems. Not a bad way of appeasing her, while making sure she understands that you set the rules. Showing her that your willing to let her have things her way, as long as they meet a criteria you set out.

That's what they call Parenting.

Poking a hole through a babies ear - that's what they call abuse.

[Scrripty]

My daughter and I talk about everything.  But she's 19 now, so she can do whatever she likes.  She went to get a tattoo with a boyfriend, and got a huge flower on her right side.  Normally we discuss things like this and I would have told her to get a WAY smaller one, and discussed the reasons why, but she didn't give me that option this time.  Her thinking was, I'm an adult, I can do as I please.  When she called me to tell me about it, she sent me a picture of it too, and my very first question was, "Have you thought about what that tattoo is going to look like when you decide to get pregnant and have a baby?"  There was a very long pause.  And a, "I don't care dad, I like it." hahah  Obviously she didn't think that one through well enough.  Normally she's a very bright kid.

[jtw1984]

I've seen a couple babies get their ears pierced. Did not seem that painful to me.

However, what about male circumcision! Come on now!

Circumcision>>>>>>>>Ear Piercing anyday!

LOL

[Paulonius]

I like your approach 12.

Not sure I agree with the mutilation argument, I just think that 12 sets out really solid parenting path on the issue. Set a goals, help the kids see that decisions have consequences and rewards/penalties, and then help guide them through the process.  Hope I can do as well.

On the mutilation issue:  if mutilation is the big concern, are you against circumcision? I assisted the doctor with our last one and it looked like it really sucked.  I would still have it done to our next kid, provided we have any more and they are boys.

As for the pain in babies this is an interesting question.  I kind of dig pain studies, wrote my unfinished masters thesis on Wittgenstein. My geeky reading material aside, there has been a long standing theory that babies don't feel pain the way older kids and adults do, based on the observation that they don't react the same way (or at all) to things that we would find painful. However, I will submit that my 3 day old son went absolutely crazy during his snip job despite anesthetic cream.  Recent studies suggest that while babies don't project the same reaction to pain, they feel it and the disconnect is in processing the reaction. Because doctors didn't think babies felt pain many procedures on infants have been performed without anesthesia. More recently doctors have been using anesthesia, probably because we are a kinder gentler generation and the theory that babies don't feel pain is not as prevalent. I read a paper analyzing surgical results on babies with and without anesthesia that showed that recovery times and fatalities dropped significantly with the use of anesthesia.  Writer hypothesized that the difference was stress from the pain of surgery.

[Cerveza]

Cool info Paulonius....

Circumcision>>>>>>>>Ear Piercing anyday!

When they start offering ear piercing in the hospital with newborns, THEN we can have a circumcision vs piercing debate.

[pacotaco]

Circumcision is just cleaner no head cheese Not sure about the Piercing thing I haven't any myself. All I remember is I was told it would get ripped out if I didn't which shredded my dream of getting a Prince Albert... owww. I am not sure about my kids as they grow up how I will scar them for life so they don't scar themselves with something they will regret later on.

I used to know a girl that had OzzY tattooed on her cheek. I wonder how she is doing these days. I heard she has more tatts now and all over. I think I always see either one as if I wasnt born with it then why do I need it?

[Cerveza]

I'm going to throw this out as well....

THIS SITE has info about missing children. There are a LOT of similarities....

14 years old: She has a pierced lower lip
14 years old: He has a tattoo on his right ankle
14 years old: She has a pierced lower lip
14 years old: ears and nose are pierced
14 years old: ears and naval are pierced
14 years old: Her ears and tongue are pierced
14 years old: She has a tattoo on her right ankle

I skipped over the basic pierced ears, because by 14 most girls will have their ears pierced.

There's a trend here.... the piercings and tattoos are NOT the trend but a symptom.

The real problem is the parents of these poor children.

Piercing the ears of babies is not in the best interest of the child, it's all about the pompous parents.

[TrailMyx]

The real problem is the parents of these poor children.

Bingo!  Give that man a free piercing!

[SunTigress]

My parents said I could do anything I wanted to my ears (within reason). Everything else had to wait until I was 18. I felt that was fair.

If a study were to come out saying, "children do not feel pain, proven time and time again", how would you feel then?

Not to mention, it is a cultural tradition for many people.
http://www.babyworld.co.uk/information/baby/health/pierce.asp


I remember my mom and I got our third hole in our right ears done together. Now we have 3 in the right and 2 in the left. Mom-daughter bonding moment

[JustAnotherFace]

I have 3 daughters, 1 almost 17 (July), one 10, and one 9.  All 3 of my girls have their ears pierced. We took the same approach that 12X took. We waited until they were old enough to know what piercings were and old enough to take care of them themselves.  We allowed them to have their ears pierced on their 6th birthdays.  All three of them loved the idea, and it made them feel like "big girls" to be able to choose to have them or not.  They of course could hardly wait until their 6th birthdays. 

When my oldest was around 13 she started asking for a naval piercing.  I of course denied that straight away for the time.  I did tell her that if she kept her grades up in school and kept a good attitude that I would consider letting her get her naval pierced when she turned 15.  Well, long story short, she made A's and B's in all her classes, and the majority of her classe were AP or advanced classes.  She also almost always dislayed a wonderful attitude.  So, of course the day she turned 15 I kept my word and I took her to the piercing shop myself and let her get her naval pierced.

Since that time, she has asked me hundreds of times if she could get a very small piercing in her nose, or a tattoo on her ankle.  My answer has been and always will be "When you turn 18 AND move out of my house you can do anything you want to your body, however UNTIL you are 18 AND move out you will live by my rules and you will have neither".  She said ok, so I can get one when I turn 18, I said Sure, as long as you arent living in my house. But Dad, thats not fair..... Baby girl, Life isnt fair.

JaF

[Endless Night]

 Ear peicing is so common at every age group and probably involes less pain than the average dentist vist that i can not see any validity in the argument of abuse (excluding extreme cases of course) + its basically a cultural thing for alot of people.

My daughter got her ears peiced when she was 1.5year-3yrs old .. dont rember .. but what i do rember is that she didnt even flinch and has had zero issues with infected ears etc.   Now if it was soley down to me i would have waited untill she was asking + xtime before allowing it, but in the case of ear peicings I will leave that to someone with direct experience ie her mother.

I personally consider Circumcision as mutilation.  The foreskin exists for a reason. But i also understand that for cultural reasons or extra charges on your insurance bill that its popular here in the USA.   And thier are probably a dozen good reasons why ear peicing isnt done in a hospital .. I bet one of them is becuase it would be a cronic waste of the doctors time and resources.

Now if we are talking tatoo's multi-peicings or areas other than the ear thats a whole different ball game.

[Cerveza]

I have to disagree...

Circumcision is performed in a hospital. There is debate about the medical benefits of circumcision, but the fact remains that it is a medical procedure which is performed in nearly every hospital.

Piercing is strictly a "beauty" thing. Ear piercing has NO medical benefit. It's done strictly as a cosmetic body modification by parents who want their little snowflakes to sparkle.

Here's a little quote

The World Health Organization (WHO; 2007), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS; 2007), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; 2008) state that evidence indicates male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of HIV acquisition by men