When you have a baby, it's important to be on the same page as your partner. Parenting isn't easy, but having a blueprint in front of you at the start is a great way to make sure you're both on the same page.
It seemed like things were going pretty well between one husband and wife, except for one thing — piercings. It was a conversation they had before the birth of their now 2-month-old daughter, but they didn't seem to reach a conclusion.
"My wife and I have a two month old daughter, Alicia," he explained on Reddit. "We've been having the piercing debate since before she was born. She comes from a culture where it's the normal thing, 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."
He thought his views would be respected, but it seems like that wasn't the case. "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," he said. "When I got home the first thing I noticed was that Alicia had a pair of gold studs."
At that point, he wanted answers.
"I demanded to know what had happened and she said they decided to 'make a day of it' and just get them done," he said. But then he did something pretty extreme. "I felt pure rage and immediately removed the earrings and threw them away," he admitted.
His wife wasn't pleased. "This enraged my wife and she said removing them was 'totally disrespectful'. She slept in the spare room last night and isn't speaking to me at all," he wrote. "As far as I'm concerned I did the right thing."
He wants to make sure his actions were justified.
"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," he said. If anything, it does take the wind out of the sails of the "day" his wife had without him.
It's a big debate, since he was definitely right about one thing — the practice of piercing a baby's ears is often cultural. For many families, it's just what you do. But he's an active participant in his own family, so he should get a say with what happens to his daughter.
Most Redditors believe he wasn't in the wrong.
One Redditor told a personal story about how something similar happened to her — and how it's a constant regret. "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," she wrote. "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."
"Your wife knew your feelings on this and did it behind your back as a 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' move," she continued. "She can cry about 'disrespect' all she wants but it was disrespectful to you, the childs other parent, to do this behind your back. Especially for something entirely aesthetic with multiple potential downsides if done incorrectly. Your daughters wellbeing is more important than her having a shiny rock in her ears."
Many people also brought up the medical risk.
Pierced ears can lead to infections, and it's hard for a baby to handle those. "In my culture it's too common to pierce ears, I think they don't even ask at the hospital when your kid is born," another Redditor commented. "My ears were pierced and I don't have any personal objections to it, I would have wanted it anyway and they healed fine, but as soon as I was old enough to know about consent, I thought it is bad. Piercing guns are bad. Piercing a baby's ears is awful."
While most people feel as if the husband was right (except for the "throwing away the earrings part," as they're something Alicia might want later on), there were a few stories from young women who had no regrets over the procedure. One commmenter described her experience: "I'm Mexican American and I had mine done as an infant, along with all the women I know in my family… I never had any major issues with mine, other than some metal sensitivity later in life." But that said, she believes it's good for a child to choose later on.
Piercings aside, his wife disrespected him.
Whether it's right or wrong is up to the individual. But it's definitely not a good move to do something so major behind a parent's back. The pierced ears add yet another difficulty to caring for a newborn, and newborn babies aren't known for being the easiest individuals to live with.
It's understandable if the wife was under pressure from her family, but it's also important for her to remember that right now, the family she owes the most loyalty to is her husband and baby Alicia. She needs to learn how to respect boundaries and understand the weight of her actions. Earrings shouldn't be a spur-of-the-moment decision.
At the end of the day, earrings are just purely aesthetic.
Children won't be kicked out of the family for not having their ears pierced. It also won't make them smarter or happier. Just because a child might be too young to remember the pain doesn't mean that the pain doesn't exist. Sure, the husband may have been a bit extreme with his reaction — but his wife was extreme with getting this done behind his back.
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