Should you pierce your baby’s ears? When parents don’t agree

No doubt, you and your partner are on the same page when it comes to the overall care and well being of your baby. Before the birth you may have had conversations about issues such are you going to co-sleep or will you be enrolling your baby in daycare. But what if you come up against something where you simply do not agree?

One couple reached such a crisis point over the piercing their daughter’s ears and the husband reached out on Reddit to vent his frustrations.

Not seeing eye to eye

The couple has a two-month-old baby girl called Alicia, and have been debating the issue of piercing her ears since before she was born. For the wife, it’s a cultural issue, but the husband does not see it that way and feels that Alicia should be the one to make that decision.

“She comes from a culture where it’s the normal thing,” says the husband. “But I’m just not comfortable with a painful process like that and would prefer to wait until she’s older so she can choose whether to go through that for herself.”

Jumping the gun

The situation completely unravelled when the wife had the baby’s ears pierced before any common ground had been established. “While we still hadn’t made a decision, my wife went for a day with her family with the baby while I had a few things I needed to sort out,” said the husband. “When I got home the first thing I noticed was that Alicia had a pair of gold studs. I demanded to know what had happened and she said they decided to ‘make a day of it’ and just get them done.”

The man was absolutely furious. “I felt pure rage and immediately removed the earrings and threw them away,” he wrote. “This enraged my wife and she said removing them was ‘totally disrespectful’.”

As a result, his wife slept in the spare room that night and isn’t speaking to her husband at all.

“As far as I’m concerned I did the right thing,” he wrote. “She got them pierced without asking me (or more importantly, ASKING ALICIA), so I took them out, because our baby doesn’t need bits of metal sticking out of her ears.”

The right to choose

The post attracted enormous attention with nearly 4000 comments. Most of the readers agreed that a person should have the right to choose when it comes to having such a procedure done, and no parent should make that decision for them.

Comments appeared such as “This should 100% be your daughter’s decision when she’s old enough to make it herself” and “No parent gets to make decisions regarding the child’s bodily autonomy without the other parent’s (and, ideally, the child’s) consent, barring a life-threatening situation.”

One reader posted from experience. “I’m of the opinion that a cultural norm that impedes another persons bodily autonomy is not a cultural norm worth following – especially ones that can cause long term damage,” they wrote. “My ears were pierced as a baby and I really wish they hadn’t been – the holes are uneven because my ears grew over time, and one hole is constantly painful/agitated and never heals over, likely damaged from the abomination that is a piercing gun. It would’ve been nice to make the choice myself and be able to go to a proper piercing shop to do so – instead I have constant problems from having a piercing gun used on me when I could not consent.”

Reaching an agreement

However for many readers, the question here is whether the wife should have had them done behind her husband’s back. “Whether or not anyone here agrees or disagrees with the morality of getting a babies ears pierced, the problem is that the mom went behind dads back about something they couldn’t agree on,” said one reader.

Another said, “Despite you voicing your concerns, your wife went behind your back and did it anyway. She was disrespectful to you, to your daughter and she just expected you to go along with it because they were done”

However, at the end of the day, it is the baby who has the pierced ears. As one reader so perfectly summed it up, “The only innocent here is baby girl.”