To dislike seeing young children with pierced ears.

[Singsongsungagain]

Inspired by a picture on FB today of a friend's young child (6 years old) sobbing her eyes out whilst getting her ears pierced.
Why the hell would any decent parent hold their child steady to allow their ears to be pierced? What is it all about??

My 45 year old unpierced friend has no problems wearing earrings............

real earrings Disappointed not clip one

Lots of things are done to babies without their consent. However usually benefits outweigh the risks. I'm thinking vaccination or surgery to correct a heart defect.

You don't normally do things to babies or children which have real risks of infection with no medical benefit.

Head circumcision?

I don't agree with that btw but pointing out not everything is for a reason.

But a child is able to ask for earrings so unless the child is being forced this isn't even relevant really

Worra- the whole thing left me gobsmacked as I have stated in my posts since the OP. To hold down a crying child whilst someone snaps a photo and post it on FB is mind boggling. To do so out of some sort of ridiculous pride that "my baby is growing up" (at 6??) is unbelievable.

I have to add that I agree with whoever it was who referred to make up/fake tan etc. The focus on physical appearance and the desire to change it is quite sad really when we're talking about pre teens. Children ought to be able to be children- naturally perfect as they all are.

I don't imagine for one minute that the desire to have pierced ears comes from no where. My 9 year old has friends with pierced ears but has never once asked for hers to be done and this is probably because I don't wear earrings. Her mind and her life is too full of other stuff to give any thought at all to earrings!

Ah the misogynistic view that women who care about appearances are air headed and don't care about the important things.

It's hardly changing the appearance ffs hardly anyone notices

real earrings Disappointed not clip on

Now you're being ridiculous. There is no logical reason why putting metal through a baby or young child's body should be seen as insignificant. It doesn't add to their beauty FFS, as if that should be necessary anyway. They're children.

t's hardly changing the appearance ffs hardly anyone notices

This thread says different.

And if it's barely noticable, why do it?!

Disappointed because the child wants to wear earrings. I can remember wanting my ears pierced and the reason wasn't to do with other people noticing

I'm talking about children not babies. However I don't get annoyed about babies with pierced ears.

Why couldn't you wear clip on ones?

This thread is about babies and younger children.

Ah well. This is clearly going nowhere is it.

I notice that when I (about 4 pages ago) made a case for actual decent reasons to have your children's ears pierced that could only be described as responsible parenting, everyone chose to ignore it and not address my points. Uh oh! Someone's made some good points against our judgeyness - well we'd better just pretend that never happened!

What baffles me is that for the most part on MN it is very widely frowned upon to judge other people's parenting. And yet with this it seems to be fair game to be completely rude and offensive to anyone who makes different choices to you.

Makes me genuinely sad to think that people are actually looking and my DD's and thinking I'm a terrible mother

Tali- she cares about her appearance. She likes to wear nice clothes and have nice hair etc. She just doesn't consider shoving metal through her ears to be essential to this strangely enough...

Not- I must have missed your pp. Decent reasons for ear piercing that constitute "responsible parenting"?? Could you run those by me again?

I have had 11 piercings in my life, only 3 of which were done with a gun; my original lobe piercings and one cartilage piercing. My ears were ridiculous, in the wrong place, at an angle, they didn't match, they were painful etc etc etc. I had them re done, and have a further five piercings in various places in my ears along with my nose. I have never had any problems with any of my proper, needle pierced piercings.

So, when I have kids and they want piercings they will have to be at least 7 for their lobes (and preferably 14 for anything else) AND they will have to come with me to a proper piercing studio and have it done with a proper hollow needle. I expect that will put off most 7 year olds!

I hate piercings on babies. I don't care that it is cultural, lots of things are that are frowned upon ("He that spareth his rod hateth his son" but we don't let Christians beat their children with sticks. We don't allow FGM. (disclaimer I KNOW FGM and ear piercings are incomparable)) It can go wrong, it is painful and most importantly it is TOTALLY UNNECESSARY.

notime I've reread your post, and those aren't good reasons for having a 2 year old's ears pierced, IMO. You're just assuming that they will want to have them pierced one day because 'most women do'.
That isn't responsible parenting to me, because you still took a risk with your children's health, for no real reason. (Personally I wouldn't describe it as terrible either, and I don't mean it as a personal attack).

I've changed my view of this over the years. I used to judge. However dd has been asking for this since she was four. We live in a diverse area so lots of her friends have them. She's seven now so I'm thinking why the hell not? Because other people will judge? Do I care? She's an intelligent child, she can decide for herself. Although dh thinks it's 'cheap' so will no doubt veto it anyway until she's older.

There are so many other things to get exercised about, not this.

Children beg/plead/nag for a variety of things it's up to the parent to make a reasonable and responsible choice, not just because they want it. My child might want a tattoo but it doesn't mean he's going to get it!

I get the cultural argument but personally don't feel it justifies everything. There are just as many bad cultural practices as good.

A child should be a child. They are perfect and don't need adult trappings. To me and this is my personal view only, it's akin to makeup and inappropriate clothing on a child, too much too young.

It's not the same as a tattoo dinnae be daft.

I will happily agree with you on this OP, YANBU.
I really dislike seeing young children with pierced ears and although I try not to judge because it can be a cultural thing, I still have to consciously manage my face when I see it.

notime propagating gender stereotypes and engaging in the misogynistic activity of encouraging your female children to care about their appearance is irresponsible parenting. We owe our children better. Much better.

as for 'my baby is growing up' as a comment about a six year old you have just overtly sexualized - its just ...urgh.

I mean people do realise that dangly earrings are supposed to be erotic right?

Oh! I forgot we only wear earrings to feel more attractive to ourselves...yeah....

Re-posting my pp for Singsong . . .

Pierced ears are not compulsory!!

No it's not compulsory. But honestly how many adult women do you see walking around without pierced ears? If the majority of girls/women will want it done eventually then how is it not good sense to have them done at an age where they will not remember the experience and you as the parent can be responsible for proper care, cleaning and ensuring they do not become infected?

I had my ears done at 8 years old after BEGGING (and I mean properly banging on relentlessy) my mum for about 3 years. Loads of other girls in my class had them done. My mum warned me it would hurt, but that didn't help when I actually got there! It hurt, I cried, wouldn't let them do the second one and took ages to get it done. Then because I was at an age where I was responsible for my own personal care, inevitably they became infected . . .cue more pain. It was my own experience that made me decide to have my daughters ears pierced early . . . to SAVE them from a painful experience . . . not to inflict unnecessary pain, not because it looks cute and CERTAINLY not because I am a chav.

Both my DD had theirs done at around age 2. They cried (a bit) for maybe 20 seconds, till I gave them their comforters and by the time we'd got round the corner to the cake shop it was all forgotten. I took care of them and never had any problems. That to me is FAR better than what I went through. I don't know how people can think it looks awful, you don't even notice tiny studs and that's all they've ever had!

As a sideline . . . how many people have posted here about their DD's begging and pleading and going on and on . . . if you're going to give in eventually then why not save yourself years worth of earache?!

YANBU to be disturbed by a fb pic of a child being held down and screaming, I too think that's odd and wonder why they would post that? But you ARE B U if you judge every time you see a small child walk past with earrings. They are not your children and you have no idea of the reasons behind why their parents chose to get them/let them have them done or of the experience the child had, good or bad.

Honestly when I decided to get my girls done I had NO idea there would be such a wrath of judgement. I've had to have this conversation SO many times.

Icebeing I have two DD, one is a complete tomboy and the majority of her christmas presents this year have something to do with Marvel characters or comic books. The other is a total princess and has mostly Frozen/Princess gifts . . . please don't talk to me about gender stereotypes. That's really not what this is about.

And Singsong and noeffingidea whether you agree with my pp or not, surely you must acknowledge that I, in my mind, was making the best decision that I could for my children based on my own experience. You must see that my reasons for having their ears pierced had nothing to do with culture or making them look cute and neither did they have anything to do with my social background (chavs!) . . . which are all the reasons that you are assuming people get it done for. My point it . . . you really don't know what people's reasons are, so it's really not your place to judge is it?

These threads always make me laugh, when people say it's common or chavvy, or distasteful to pierce a baby's ears.

I had mine done when I was 7 (about 6.5 years later than is the norm in my family), they were done by my GP. In my (Italian) family, piercing a baby's ears is the norm. Had I had girls and not boys, I'd have done it whilst they were babies, mine were only so late because I wasn't well as a baby/young child.

I never had any problems with that piercing (I had tiny, very delicate gold sleepers which just came unfastened at a slight pull, so very limited risk of getting my lobe ripped, and they were easy to rotate and keep clean when I first had them done) - I had a second hole done in the jewellers when I was at uni. It was pretty sore for quite a while. Eventually I took that earring out after a few years, and the hole entirely closed up another couple after that. You can barely see it now.