Getting your child's ears pierced is a big deal, but usually parents are on the same page — if and when it happens. Unfortunately, two new parents whose situation was shared on Reddit are so at odds about their infant daughter's ears that the Original Poster even went as far as to take out his baby’s earrings while his wife wasn’t looking — and doing so has caused a huge rift.
The two have been debating getting their 2-month-old’s ears pierced since she was born.
In his wife’s culture, getting a child’s ears pierced very young is a 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 explained in a post on Reddit.
He thought they were still debating things, but when he came home recently he discovered that his wife made the call for him.
“When I got home the first thing I noticed was that [my daughter] had a pair of gold studs,” he wrote. “I demanded to know what had happened and she said they decided to ‘make a day of it’ and just get them done.”
The OP was livid.
He immediately took out the earrings and threw them away.
“This enraged my wife and she said removing them was ‘totally disrespectful,’” he recalled. “She slept in the spare room last night and isn't speaking to me at all.”
The OP thought he did the right thing.
“She got them pierced without asking me, so I took them out, because our baby doesn't need bits of metal sticking out of her ears,” he added.
Now he's wondering if he's being an a–hole.
Some people thought the OP was wrong for taking out the earrings.
"I've always heard you shouldn't take freshly made piercings out, because it's more likely they will get infected. Hopefully OP disinfected his hands thoroughly and also her ears afterwards," one commenter wrote.
Another commenter thought he was wrong "for the simple fact that you removed them 'in a pure rage.' I doubt you’ve ever had your ears pierced but they honestly probably weren’t hurting your baby UNTIL you did that. So you intentionally caused your child pain to get back at your wife. F—in' sad."
And a third commenter put it this way: "Honestly earrings are a huge part of people cultures and a lot of times its a tradition to get the daughters ears pierced when theyre a baby so they don't have to do it while they get older. I really don't see why get so upset over it."
On the other hand, some people agreed that the earrings needed to go.
“[Not the A–hole]. This should 100% be your daughter's decision when she's old enough to make it herself," one person commented.
"Your two month old baby does not need her ears pierced," someone else, adding this:
"Its purely an aesthetic thing that is completely unnecessary. I understand its a part of her culture but where do you draw the line when it comes to procedures for cultural reasons. That being 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."
"In my country is normal too and I hated wearing earrings, my mom didn't let me take them off till I was 16, 16 years of something I hated and bothered me. [Not the A–hole] at all," another commenter chimed in.
Parenting is not just about making the right call for your child but is also learning to compromise with your partner and respect their feelings — from this post, we're not really sure if the OP or his wife did either.
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