Kind of like how being from Tennessee is a very strong indicator of being an inbred redneck?
Oh, wait…or would that be a broad-brush, ignorant thing to say?
It’s poking bits of metal through their cartilage, actually.
This issue is so low on my parenting radar as to be almost non-existent. I’m not getting my own daughter’s ears pierced as an infant/toddler, for the following reasons: 1) It never would occur to me to do so, 2) Earrings are just one more tiny little thing to fall off and get lost around the house and possibly get ingested by a small person, and 3) I am not going to be in charge of cleaning/disinfecting yet ANOTHER body part. If she wants her ears pierced, she can have it done when she’s old enough to be responsible for taking care of the piercing, and not before.
If someone wants to get their baby’s ears pierced, and is willing to take care of the piercing and monitor the jewelry to make sure it doesn’t fall out and get eaten, then great, more power to them. I honestly could not care less.
Yup.
It is IMHO after all.
And it’s still poor-white-trashy as all hell - might as well by the kid a full set of “Bratz” dolls and put eyeliner on the baby while you’re at it.
Perhaps they get the idea that they have the right because they do have the right. There are no laws that prevent piercings. In certain areas its a service offered by the peditrician.
I wouldn’t pierce my baby (we did for my daughter’s sixth birthday at her request, she’d been begging for two years) nor would I circumcise. But parents do have the right to do either of those things.
True that. But, when you drop a broad-brush line like that without an ounce of tact behind it, you’ve got to expect to be called out on it.
True.
But it’s still trashy. 
I think, rather, that they have the freedom to do so, as in, it is not restricted. That’s not the same thing as a right. “Your rights end, where mine begin.” What are the child’s rights? Speaking hypothetically: Does a child have a right to not have his or her body altered at the parent’s whim? At what point do the child’s rights supercede the parent’s rights in this regard?
I’m speaking hypothetically, of course. I know perfectly well I couldn’t take my grade-school-aged child old to get an eyebrow, lip, cartilege or other body piercing even if she wanted it. I could take a boy of any age for circumcision, which is certainly more traumatic and painful than ear piercing, maybe even over his objections - and a great many doctors would do it, even without medical indication. I could not have a girl child genitally altered in any fashion (except to “correct” intersex genitals) even if it were my cultural requirement. It’s a hodgepodge of what is allowed by culture, tradition and law, which follows no consistent logic or reason from one alteration to another, or from gender to gender.
I simply disagree in the use of the word ‘right’. This isn’t ancient Rome, and we don’t have the concept of Paterfamilia anymore. Do we?
I feel a tangent coming on. However, here we go:
What we do not have any more is the notion of familia. That is to say, piercing and circumcision and other permanent markings of children are, simply, a statement of belonging: This child is of us and cherished by us and will remain so no matter what.
When it’s a cultural matter, that is.
The notion that a child has the right not to be a member of the community is, simply, bewildering to the point of being a null program. It’s like saying that a child has the right to divorce his or her parents and go find some better ones. It is after all at the parents’ whim that a child is born. At what point do the wishes of the child supercede those of the parent in this regard? Or possibly you are thinking that parents do not permanently alter their children as long as they do not pierce their ears?
In Spain, at 18. Mileage will vary by location.