A proud mother posted a video to social media, showing her daughter as a newborn compared with now. It seemed innocent enough at first, but once viewers took a closer look at the beautiful baby girl, they were outraged to see what the woman had done to her.
While social media comes with its benefits, it can also be a magnifying glass through which the opinions of thousands of strangers converge. So, when a young mother introduced her infant daughter to the online world, she quickly found herself drowning in a torrent of condemnation over a choice she had made regarding her child’s appearance.
Five-month-old Lara already had a huge following on TikTok thanks to her mom documenting various moments of the infant’s life. The precious little girl has racked up nearly 1 million followers for nothing more than being adorable. However, when baby Lara’s fans noticed something about the child’s appearance, it sparked a major backlash for her mother.
In a video post captioned “show your baby as a newborn vs now,” Lara’s mom compared a clip of the baby less than 24 hours old to a clip of Lara months later. As the camera pans closer to the baby, who is still lying swaddled in the hospital bassinet, viewers noticed something on the baby’s ear.
The camera captures a small, silver earring in the shape of a flower. Internet users realized that the mother had the child’s ears pierced just hours after she had been born. Lara hadn’t even been discharged from the hospital before her mother scheduled the minor cosmetic procedure for her baby girl.
Of course, as soon as viewers discovered this, a flood of negative comments filled the post. Many questioned why the mother would choose to get a child’s ears pierced so young, even before she had left the hospital, Upsocl reported. Some even reasoned that the decision should be left up to the child.
“I just do not get it. And it hurts just like when they are older! Don’t kid yourself,” one commenter wrote.
“It’s their decision if they want their ears pierced, or is it? I’m going to let my babies decide when they understand these things,” another argued.
“Maybe it’s just me, but the day my children were born, getting their ears pierced was very low on my list of worries,” another said.
The backlash was large enough for the mother to respond to critics of her decision. In a follow-up video, she explained that ear piercing is one of the services medical professionals at the hospital offer.
“When you get your ear pierced when you are 2 or 3 days old, you don’t feel pain like when you are 1 or 2 years old. The holes are made by the neonatologists themselves in the hospital at birth,” the mother fought back. “It’s my decision.”
The mother went on to explain that the practice of newborn ear piercing is normal in many cultures and is commonplace in her country. She insisted that just because some are offended by the practice doesn’t make it inherently bad.
Unsurprisingly, the internet hasn’t accepted her answer. There are still thousands who have expressed their anger and disapproval over the mother piercing her child’s ears so soon after birth.
Regardless of where you fall on the idea of piercing a newborn’s ears, insisting that it’s wrong because the child didn’t make the decision concerning their own body is a terrible argument. Parents make nearly every decision for their children’s bodies throughout their lives until they are mentally and physically developed enough to handle the consequences of their own decisions.
Whether or not the pros outweigh the cons, the baby doesn’t seem bothered by her piercings, either as a newborn or months later. Perhaps the bigger lesson is in the consequences of sharing our children’s lives with complete strangers on the internet.
