To not understand why parents hate their kids getting tattoos

[lailamaria]

Obviously this applies to adult children but it's something i've come across a lot and never really understood it, is it because parents feel some sort of ownership over their kids bodies or is it something different.

This isn't a brag or anything but my mum's never been bothered, she has 2 tattoos herself with extremely sentimental meaning (although i think people should get tattoos whether their sentimental or not) and for my sister's 18th she even paid for her to get one as her birthday present.

I understand not liking tattoos on yourself but demanding your adult children don't get them or even talk them out of getting them I think is rather rude when their paying for them themselves with their own money. My aunt used to ask my cousin to cover hers up just because she hated it (it was a flower on her back so it wasn't like the tattoo was offensive.)

I'm not trying to judge truly I personally just find it strange

I'm not keen on the look of tattoos and love bodies in the natural state. Something also not considered is that they are scar tissue, and as such vulnerable to things like skin cancer from sun exposure in excess of undamaged skin.
I would be upset if my children damaged their bodies in this way after all the effort I've made to keep them healthy.

*love their tattoos

My daughters been getting them since 18. I can’t say I get my knickers in a twist but I do think she thinks she’s being edgy, even now at 22, when it’s all rather passé by this point. You’re more of a rebel not having them. I do particularly dislike things like the infinity symbol, wrist tattoos etc which are the tweety pies of this generation and fortunately hers are more art pieces.

if she likes them fine, it’s her body and her money, I’ve got more to focus on than weeping, wailing and gnashing my teeth over it - would prefer her healthy happy and tattooed than many of the other possibilities eh.

I’m not anti tattoos but have somehow never got round to it, I suppose I never wanted one enough.

Some of my friends have witchy or botanical tattoos, with varying degrees of artistry or artistic merit and I thought if I ever did, it would be like that, small and with fine lines.
Recently a friend of mine with one of these on her wrist has shown me how the ink has bled over the years, and the once delicate subtle design is now a bit of a splodgy mess.
So now I've been put off.

I feel like very few people can carry them off well. They are very mainstream now anyway.

I always remember taking DD swimming one Saturday and loads of the dads had Robbie Williams type tribal tattoos on their arms and just thinking how naff they were.

Exactly. This thread is not every poster saying you’ll regret it, at all.

Newsflash - humans will always judge other humans on the way they look, it's human nature. However having tattoos and being judged by them is within your control.

The same as the thread about the woman playing music in her garden. She was called a chav, tacky, common, classless, rough. All totally acceptable.

Report them. I have! I don’t like tattoos but hate people using words like ‘chav’ more.

The thing is, your late teens and early twenties are not a time when you necessarily want to make irreversible decisions. At times I considered getting a tattoo but I'm glad I didn't - because the person I was at 18 wasn't who I was at 23 and the person I was at 23 wasn't who I was at 30.

At the time the designs I would have chosen were things I would have said were extremely original and personal to me - except they became extremely mainstream and popular (to the point of being naff). We are far more homogeneous than we realise.

Tattoos done on very young people are usually awful because they are cheap. A cheap tattoo is an abominable thing. Badly inked, in languages that neither the wearer nor the inker speak (I have a Chinese friend who starts muttering whenever the summer comes and men take their tops off). A friend's daughter was horrified when I told her that a whole sleeve should be at least £10k. If it deserves to be on your skin, it should be good work.

In many ways, I'd like the minimum age for a tattoo to be raised to 25 but I know it won't happen. Proper tattoo artists would survive (they hate the people who scratch out tattoos on underage kids) but the scratchers wouldn't.

I've not read any previous comments (which can be dangerous on MN) but I think the way the OP is phrased is a little extreme.

I would love to have a tattoo but can't bring myself to have one as I know I'll want to change it after a few months. The only type of tattoo I could get is something meaningful but there just isn't anything I want right now. I'd simply convey that same cautiousness to my kids - I don't think providing guidance/an opinion to your adult child means you think you have 'ownership' over their body.

This is clearly a subjective topic and whilst I'd be slightly upset if my child got say a full arm sleeve I would aggressively go out of my way to stop a 20yo child getting a face tattoo knowing how difficult it could make things in the future. At the end of the day, I see my role as a parent is to ensure I guide my kids to make a balanced decision that gives them the best life prospects - for me this trumps any notion of 'it's your child's own body and they can do what they want'.

I think they are ugly, but I'd never say anything. I can't help my tastes and I'll never think they aren't ugly so of course I wouldn't be happy if my kids got them, but I wouldn't be rude about it. I wouldn't make a negative comment or an insincere compliment, I'd just ignore it. I'm sure they might surmise that I wasn't impressed, but adults can decide to do what they want with their bodies and I'm sure nobody is trying to impress me with their tattoo. Especially not my kids when they are grown up - people don't get tattoos to impress their mums!

It's very very simple.

Some people like things.
Some people don't like things.

Is that easier to understand?

I don't think we are moving away from judging people how they look. Not at all. It's getting worse if anything, because of the myriad platforms available for people to find their like-minded chums.

I don't like tattoos, I don't say anything to anybody about theirs because, not my business but I think they look awful. I wouldn't want my children to have them, I think there are still many jobs where tattoos would block success. I know that posters will rush on to say that their partners are x, y, z super-employed and they are covered from head to foot but I don't believe that. People will not necessarily comment but judge they definitely will.

It's not important that people like other people's tattoos and it's not necessary for people with tattoos to keep courting other peoples' opinions of them, I don't know why they do that?

Tattoos are so mainstream now, nearly everybody has them. I don't like the permanence aspect and would never have one but, each to their own.

Rough, tacky, common, and plenty more adjectives.
The usual couple of posts saying plenty of professional people have them. The odd one, more like.
I know no professionals with tattoos, but plenty of criminals. I worked in a prison for six years and saw enough to last me a lifetime.
I am happy to be snobbish and judgemental.

The thing is, your late teens and early twenties are not a time when you necessarily want to make irreversible decisions

which I would agree with. Now in my 40’s. I absolutely wouldn’t have agreed in my late teens/early twenties when I was being bombarded with a constant narrative about being an adult, responsibilities, education, career choices etc. alongside not really having a concept of long term consequences because how can you really identify with that when you’ve been an ‘adult’ for less than a decade? In general people don’t really appreciate the realities of concepts like time and mortality until they’re much older and experiencing it.

A lot of choices made in early adulthood may be on paper reversible but in reality take a lot of resources to undo or change the course of. Young adults tend to lump everything into one category based on their experience of time.

I’ve gone off on a tangent but it’s rarely the case that a tattoo has ruined someone’s life. We all make mistakes and by and large a tattoo is at the milder end of regrets. I’d, personally, not class it’s impact on someone’s life as the same as something like a bad choice in education which can really be limiting and hard to rectify later on. If your worst choice in life means you might not feel confident in a particular style of swim suit or wedding dress you haven’t done too badly in my book.

The word chav always comes up about babies having their ears pierced as if that's a totally suitable argument against it!
Everyone has different preferences and styles and not everyone will like them.

But by your own post, you’re experience is biased based on who you’ve been exposed to.

I know lots of professionals with tattoos but then my working life hasn’t had much exposure to criminals or prisons. 🤷‍♀️

Maybe it's because they know how often people regret them once they're older? A tattoo on a young adult with lovely smooth skin looks very different once they're in their 40s with not such supple skin 😁 I have three friends who got tattoos in their twenties hwo regret them and keep them covered up. Only one has shown me hers, and to be fair it did look naff.

Because on the whole they look pretty shit.

There are some good looking ones around, I think you need to go to an amazing artist for something well considered. But most people get the same old shit, then add a few more without it being part of an overall scheme and they just look like they've been drawn on by some kids. Like a doodled school desk.

Add to that, that they fade and fuzz up on the lines so by the time you're middle aged what ever you have is grey and blurry and a bit "of it's time" ie celtic cross/band.

Too many people have tattoos now to make them anything special. I’d hope my sons wouldn’t have them but it’s their choice. This won’t be popular but I hate tattoos on older women - rough.

Because nobody wants their child to ruin their body. It's not rocket science.

Where has anybody done that on this thread? Not liking tattoos says nothing about a person other than that they do not like tattoos.

Posters have given their reasons for not liking tattoos but none that I've read have been derisory or rude to people with tattoos. Where are you reading unpleasantness or name-calling?

Considering that I have more than a few myself and am in the (long) process of getting more, it would be hypocritical of me to be upset if any of my (grown up) children got inked. I'd not try and dissuade them, but I would tell them the cons as well as the pros. I'd make sure they knew to look for a good artist (if they don't have a waiting list round here there is usually a reason and if they're cheap then that's not a good sign either), that it hurts while being done, hurts for a good few days after and needs aftercare for the rest of your life.

As for regretting them in middle age, I may want a couple of mine reworked/covered (because I didn't realise that cheap/no waiting list was a red flag), but I don't regret any of mine. In fact at 50 I love most of them, and I regularly get really nice comments about my leg.

I really don’t like them. I don’t like facial piercings either. Or those ear piercings where you stretch the hole so it’s the size of a coin.

I hope my kids don’t do that because I just don’t like it. Yes there are worse things they could do. I can hope they don’t end up unemployed and drug addicted, and also hope they don’t get tattoos. Call it cerebral multitasking.