Ears and Infants

A Piercing Question

By Laura Cone

Even though Dana Clay of Honey Brook, Pa., has six piercings in one ear and four in another, she chose not to pierce her now 4-year-old daughter Mary's ears when she was an infant. Clay understands how some parents would be enamored with the idea. After all, most newborn babies are bald, and piercing a baby girl's ears may help the child appear more feminine.

"The big thing is I would not do something to her body before she was old enough to make that decision for herself," Clay says. "She says that she wants to get it done when she is 11. I think by that time she would be old enough."

A growing number of health experts agree that parents should wait to have their baby's ears pierced for health reasons. But some parents do not want to wait.

Dr. Ken Gottesman, the attending pediatrician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan, recommends parents wait until their baby has his or her second set of immunization shots because of the risk of tetanus.

Dr. Gottesman, the father of two boys, says he has other concerns as well, even if the person administering the ear piercing uses a sterile kit. "My concern also is that you are working with a very small earlobe, and the target is very small," he says. "I always tell people to wait longer rather than shorter. I tell them to wait until their girls are a few years old and their ear lobes are a nice size and it's an easy target to hit. If it's a birthday present, it means something to them. We have people who pierce their little girl's ears at 2 weeks of age." 

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• Talk about it!