Did you pierce your baby girl's ears? - Page 5

[kittywitty]

Originally Posted by Drummer's Wife

no way, not a baby - girl or boy.

eta: and I don't think earrings on a baby are attractive, anyway. Also, people will think the baby is the opposite gender no matter if the ears are pierced and she is wearing a bright pink dress. And really, who cares if strangers think she's a boy?

This. Exactly.

It's cruel. I don't stab holes in my kids for looks and I sure wish that choice had been given to me as a kid. I have never liked my pierced ears. You can always get cute clip on earrings if it's that big a deal. That's what my little ones use if they want earrings on to dress up. There are huge assortments nowadays that don't hurt to clip on even.

[belltree]

No way. Neither a boy or a girl. It is up to the to decide. Plus I have seen injuries when a little girl cut stuck with her earing while playing and ripped out part of her ear.

If they are older (teenagers at least) my kids can do as they please.

[indigoscot]

we have 2 boys but if we had a girl ABSOLUTELY NOT!! i think it looks creepy on a baby girl...

[ohiomommy1122]

Originally Posted by earthmama369

Like circumcision (although on a much smaller scale in terms of pain and function), I figured it would be her choice when she gets older. Who knows? Maybe she won't want pierced ears. Maybe she'll want something else pierced instead. Not my body, not my choice.

[mom2happy]

No, I wouldnt subject a baby to that.
If your baby could talk, she would say NO that would hurt me.
I have two girls and the rule is at 10 yrs old if they still want them pierced they can.

[DCMama01]

We're going next weekend to get her ears pierced, but I kinda wish we'd gone sooner.

[nola79]

I voted no, because I didn't, but I wanted to and just never got around to doing it. I think it's cute and was going to get them pierced right away but her dr's office doesn't pierce and I wasn't sure where else to take her.

[KaylaBeanie]

Originally Posted by nola79

I voted no, because I didn't, but I wanted to and just never got around to doing it. I think it's cute and was going to get them pierced right away but her dr's office doesn't pierce and I wasn't sure where else to take her.

Check and see if your pedi does it. A lot of times, you just buy the earrings and they'll do it for $25 or so.

[cloudbutterfly]

My dad wouldn't let my mom have mine pierced as a baby. When I was three, I saw another little girl with pierced ears and HAD to have them, too. I screamed bloody murder, and I think at that moment my mom wished we'd had it done when I was too little to remember. But I at least understood it was my own choice, so I appreciate that...in retrospect. I'm sure I didn't at the time.

[KaylaBeanie]

Originally Posted by cloudbutterfly

My dad wouldn't let my mom have mine pierced as a baby. When I was three, I saw another little girl with pierced ears and HAD to have them, too. I screamed bloody murder, and I think at that moment my mom wished we'd had it done when I was too little to remember. But I at least understood it was my own choice, so I appreciate that...in retrospect. I'm sure I didn't at the time.

That's me, except I actually wish my mom had gotten mine pierced as a baby. I wanted my ears pierced so badly I would cry, but I was so scared. I still remember being 5 and sitting in the chair, terrified beyond belief.

[Sarah W]

I can't say that it was cultural, but all of the women in my family had their ears pierced as babies. I was going to wait until she was older, but I did have them done when she was six months old. It was an emotional decision that I might not have made, but I'm OK that I did it.

[~Adorkable~]

here is the post that i put in a discussion that started comparing folks views on ear piercing in comparison to circ. it applies very much to this.

i was a professional piercer for over 12 years and a member of the Association of Professional Piercers during that time. if you have any questions feel free to ask. I am very happy to see another professional piercer speak up with what sounds like a similar stance.


i strongly believe it should not be up to us to permanently change another persons body and both these thing do that, albeit in very different ways, both ar an invasion into their rights to decide your own future. my anti circ views have many reasons but one strong one at the heart of it is this very belief.

X-POSTED from : http://www.mothering.com/discussions....php?t=1223253
as a professional piercer with 12 years working in the industry i want to address some things about the ear piercing

• it does hurt, many folks seem to think that earlobes act different than other parts of the body and that is simply not true in any way, anyone that tells you something different about how the earlobe feels heals, gets infected, bleeds or scars differently to the rest of the body is not educated on the subject. some kids are good at dealing with the pain and yes it is short lived, but why cause your child pain when there is an easy option? and an infected piercing witch is very common with small children can hurt very bad for a long time.
  
  
• any piercing puts a child at risk for infections like hepatitis, staph others. and since it is going to itch as the heal process, it will also be nearly impossible to keep their hands off it, increasing infection risk many times over that of a older child that can understand the need to leave them alone
  
  
• many piercing done on young children will not be in a ascetically pleasing or side to side matching location when they are an adult. i have seen this literally thousands of times.
  
  
• the vast amount of responsible professional piercers will not do very small children for all the above reasons, if you shop around till you find someone that will, i would seriously question the rest of their judgment and choices on cleanliness.
  
  
• body piercing has ben a part of human culture for eons and wonderfully so, in most ancient cultures it is a right of passage, most folks that i saw in my career also used it like that, why take this special part of growing up away from your kids?let them decide to do it when they are old enough to understand what the process is going to be like and take responsibility to at least be a helpful participant in the healing process.
  
  
• piercing guns can not be clean properly and the locations that use them are almost never clean, in most states they are exempt from the laws if there is any that oversee "profession piercing shops" and the big ear piercing gun manufacturers have a strong lobby (who would a thunk it) that lobby is making sure the folks that use their guns dont need to get training or even wash their hands, it is completely out of hand. i spend years helping write and lobby for state laws when i owned a shop and i could not believe that the ear gun lobby, in my state and others, actually got included in it that the ear lobe was not formally part of the body and there for did not fall under any of the laws that we passed.

here is a great resource to learn more about safe body piercing in general and in regard to this conversation ear piercing gun in particular (since 99.9% of babies and very children will be pierced with a gun)

http://www.safepiercing.org/piercing/faq/#guns

ok getting off my soap box here now, as you can see this is something i have thought a lot about both professionally and personally. its another case of something with risk and side effects that is often routinely done and glosses over because of the shear commonness of it.

[waiting2bemommy]

Yes although for us it's now a question of "when," not "if." Originally we were going to do it at the birth (we planned a home birth) then we ended up having her in the hospital we said 2 weeks, and now dd is almost 6 weeks and her dad wants to wait until 5 months after her 3rd hep B shot (the only shot she is getting, because of getting her ears pierced) but I am pushing to do it this week at the 6 week mark. I don't think it's a big deal.....I wanted my ears pierced my whole life and my parents wouldn't allow it until 14. The result was that I pierced my own ears multiple times as a young child/preteen and they even got infected a couple times. they close up fine if you take the earrings out long enough so if she decides she hates them she can just take them out.

[habitat]

I realize that I'm on the VERY radical end of things here, but I just want to air that I wouldn't pierce my (hypothetical) female-bodied baby's ears for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I feel that gender roles are a false and often destructive construction of the society we live in. I study childhood androgyny, and I feel that perpetuating the role of "girl", and all that implies, on my child with gender-specific jewelery, without their consent, simply because they have female anatomy is not okay with me at all. Gender discrimination and role-identification starts very early, which is why I will raise my children with the same standards regarding dress, toys, etc.

I live in a community where a number of my friends do not identify with the roles that were projected upon them by society based on the cultural implications of their bodies. I know that there are trans and queer-identifying parents here on mothering. I wonder how many more female-bodied people would naturally be making more "masculine" choices if they didn't have a particular brand of "femininity" projected on them since birth. What if my "daughter" suddenly decides they're really my "son" or neither? Would I be able to accept this the way I feel I should if I've been choosing and impressing all of these arbitrary signifiers of their assumed, now rejected, gender? Would my love for them be the same or different?

Not too long ago in China, parents would tightly bind the feet of their female babies so that they would fit into a special tiny shoe to demonstrate status. This is a sex-specific (body-specific) brand of abuse and is not okay with me, just as poking a hole into my child's ear (though the scale of pain is clearly different) isn't okay with me. My middle-class white American culture dictates that I should dress the babies with penises in mostly blue and darker, bolder colors and the babies with female anatomy in mostly pink and pastels. God forbid a baby or child with a penis wears pink, and horror of horrors when a female child gets called a "boy".

No one knows the true implications of cultural gender-typing at such an early age, and just as I would want my (again, hypothetical) male-bodied child to choose whether or not to circ, I'd also want them to choose whether or not to be raised as a "girl", a "boy", or androgynous. Same goes for a female-bodied baby.


Gender Liberation !!!

Okay I'm done.

[BunnySlippers]

Originally Posted by waiting2bemommy

Yes although for us it's now a question of "when," not "if." Originally we were going to do it at the birth (we planned a home birth) then we ended up having her in the hospital we said 2 weeks, and now dd is almost 6 weeks and her dad wants to wait until 5 months after her 3rd hep B shot (the only shot she is getting, because of getting her ears pierced) but I am pushing to do it this week at the 6 week mark. I don't think it's a big deal.....I wanted my ears pierced my whole life and my parents wouldn't allow it until 14. The result was that I pierced my own ears multiple times as a young child/preteen and they even got infected a couple times. they close up fine if you take the earrings out long enough so if she decides she hates them she can just take them out.

so how about you wait until she actually wants them, and then you can say 'yes' instead of 'no' like your parents did.

[cocoanib]

No, we will not be poking holes in DD's body.
I have several piercings and really like them, but I'll let DD make that decision for herself. If she asks, we'll get it done then. If she never asks, then we won't.

[trimestersdoula]

Nope, nope, nope!!!!

DH and I both have piercing and tattoos.....and a lot of them. DH has so many tattoos I can't count them and he used to have a lot of piercings. I have a facial piercing as well as in my ears and two largish tattoos. People EXPECTED us to get our DD's ears pierced and totally thought we were crazy that we refuse to do it. They think because we have tattoos and piercings that we for surely would have pierced our daughters ears.

It is HER body. Not ours. We are old enough to make the decisions on what we do/don't want done to ours. She's not and I would never make an alteration to her body. When she is old enough to decide for herself, I have no problem with her getting them done. Just as when she turns 16, if she wants other things pierced....have at 'er. When she turns 18, if she wants to get tattooed, go ahead. Those things are very personal decisions. Even 'JUST' having her ears peirced.

[reignbelle]

No piercing here. They can get it when they ask, realize it will hurt, and will comply with keeping it clean.

It hurts I wouldn't have my kid wear painful shoes so he looks cute. Why get a earrings?

[gaudynight]

No. They're welcome to have them done if they want it and DH and I think they understand the pain/care issues etc. I wouldn't do it for someone who can't consent just so people won't think they're a boy.