Mom let her 12yo get a tattoo and everyone loses their shit.

There is an article getting passed around by enraged moms regarding a twelve-year-old kid who was allowed to get a tattoo. The pissed off crowd has decided that the mother of this child is a bad parent who shouldn’t be allowed to have children; that she is abusive; and that she is a horrible person.

The horrible people the ones who are condemning someone when they don’t even have all the deets.

The bad moms are the ones who have been socially conditioned to think that THIS form of mutilation is bad, while others are okay.

What a bunch of bologna.

Moms, you abuse your kids all the fucking time. And we have decided, collectively, that it’s okay. Let me give you a personal example.

1. I have a daughter.

My daughter Abbie getting her ears pierced. There was much ice cream had that day.

She is nine, just finished the third grade. I wanted to pierce her ears while she was still a baby, but her father wasn’t for this plan.

Instead, we had it done when she begged us to do at the age of six. Changing the earrings was too difficult, so she let them close up, and has decided she wants to get it done again for her upcoming tenth birthday.

2. I have a son.

He is twenty, working his way through college. He is circumcised.

3. We like family dinners on the go.

We take our kids out for family night occasionally at fast food places. You know those Golden Arches serve poison, right? You’ve seen the documentary SUPER SIZE ME, haven’t you? So-called “food” from McD’s has poop in it.

Not to mention processed and/or sugar-packed foods like boxed macaroni, pop, candy, and basically everything you’ve ever served your children throughout their lifetimes that isn’t a carrot or a blueberry.

4. Speaking of feeding your kids…

My sister was unable to breastfeed her babies. That’s a huge no-no in this current age of mommy-shaming anyone who doesn’t do things the “natural” way. I don’t stand by that theory, but I know many who do. They, my friends, are bitches.

My sister loves her kids and is a super model of what a mom ought to be.

Also? Her kids aren’t a-holes. They turned out to be pretty fucking spectacular. All three are ahead of the curve academically, and none of them have ever been in any trouble, and moreover, they like me and they like to read.

So maybe this last one wasn’t the best example of how we have collectively decided it’s okay to abuse our kids in certain ways, since NOT nursing babies is NOT, in fact abusive. It is, however, a great example of how we are in the habit of picking and choosing what’s okay and what’s not.

Because, you know, our society is never arbitrary in its decision-making. {*rolls eyes*}

To recap:

We have decided, as a culture, that it is perfectly acceptable to punch a hole through our children’s skin. That’s pretty goddamn abusive, y’all.

We have decided, as a culture, that it is perfectly acceptable to chop off a piece of our kids’ penis. That’s pretty goddamn abusive, y’all. Of course, there is now a movement that regards this act as a horrendous betrayal of our boys, in that we are disfiguring them without their permission. Those people ain’t all wrong. I don’t regret having the procedure done, as there were medical complications requiring it, and he has zero problem with the fact that I had his foreskin lopped off early on in childhood, but that makes it no less abusive an act.

Also? Completely unrelated here, but no less relevant in my opinion, is the fact that I’ve been with guys on both end of the spectrum, and I happen to much prefer those who have been circumcised. It’s okay if you think I’m bitchy for that, because I’m married and I ain’t fucking you, so really you don’t have to worry over my opinion.

We have decided, as a culture, that it is perfectly acceptable to poison our children {otherwise Gold Arches and the like would have closed down years ago, and there wouldn’t be any boxed macaroni on the shelves}. That’s pretty goddamn abusive, y’all.

We have decided, as a culture, that it is perfectly acceptable to abuse our kids in certain fashions.

I’m not writing this in an attempt to sway anyone into thinking that allowing your child to get a tattoo is okay. Honestly, I’m not. We each have to do what we think is best for our kids, based on our own values, morals, cultures, personal histories, etc.

And I’m not trying to defend this woman’s choices, since I don’t know her – and moreover, neither do you! Maybe the tat-giving mama is a piece of shit. But it ain’t because she allowed her kid to get inked.

I just want you to think about it.

We have been culturally conditioned to think that some forms of child abuse are okay. How is a tattoo worse than an ear-piercing, or circumcision, or feeding your child spaghetti-o’s? The answer, logically, which means with removal of all emotions and preconceived notions, is that it’s NOT.

It’s not different. It’s the same kind of thing.

And it’s okay to argue, “But it FEELS different!”

Yes, it does.

It feels different because as a society we have decided that tats are bad.

And you can keep thinking that.

I’m not here to tell you to stop thinking that.

But “different” is not the same thing as “abusive”.

It’s okay to admit that you don’t understand why tattooing your kids seems worse than ear-piercings, circumcision, or tacos from the drive-through window. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t let my little girl get a tattoo, either.

Not unless there were extenuating circumstances.

Like, for example, with my son.

I let my son get a tat when he was 16.

I even paid for it. He had overcome my divorce from the man who had raised him for five years, and was subsequently dealing with a new man in the house. He also had to endure racial hazing from the football team, since he is half-Hispanic in an all-white, small-town village.

He joined the wrestling team, where he excelled {he went to State his senior year}, and managed to keep his grades up the whole time. He tends to only date girls at the top of their classes academically, and of those, the majority of them have been valedictorians. His friends are super nice guys who still come over regularly. His field of study: physical therapy and sports medicine, because he wants to help people take care of their bodies.

We’re talking about a generous kid who makes smart choices, even in the face of hardship. And he wanted a tattoo. He didn’t have a lot of control over his life at the age of 16. I gave him something he could call his own. And you know what he ended up getting? A stone cross on which are “carved” the names of his siblings.

I know, he’s such a jerk, amirite?

My son Christopher’s 2nd tattoo reads “Faith” until it is turned upside down, at which point it reads “Hope”. He’s badass like that.

He has since gotten himself more tats, and all are equally positive. The first one he got himself was the word “Faith”, which, when turned upside-down, reads as the word “Hope”.

The second and third ones were a self-affirmations:

“With pain comes strength” and “Believe in the impossible”.

Yep, total a-hole over here.

He and I plan to get matching tattoos for his upcoming twenty-first birthday.

We are getting the Batman symbol as a reminder that even in our darkest hour, there will always be someone we can count on to save us – each other.

We used to read comics together when he was little, and this will forever be a sign of our shared interest, even as we grow apart and no longer like the same things. I’m honored he wants to share this with me.

Okay, yeah, it was my idea, but I’m stoked at how excited he was over it.

My son Christopher’s 3rd tattoo is a positive affirmation which reads “With pain comes strength”. He’s a wrestler and a weight lifter, so he really ought to know.

Speaking of tattoos as symbols…

A young friend of mine lost her father not long ago. She got a tattoo to commemorate his life, with a phrase that reminds her of him.

It’s easy to condemn people you don’t know.

It’s easy to assume the worst in others. It’s easy to fall into an “US versus THEM” mentality. On one side are all the good moms, and on the other side are all the bad moms.

But who gets to decide what’s “good”?

A mom let her twelve-year-old child get a tattoo.

Does this constitute child abuse? No. Not unless you start taking into account all the other ways we have decided it is okay to abuse our children.

Is the child hurt? No more so than any of the other number of ways we have decided it is okay to hurt our children.

Is the mom horrendous? We don’t know. Maybe her kid needed to feel control over something, and maybe this was her creative way to try and reach him/her. Maybe it was a cultural thing.

We JUST. DON’T. KNOW.

Does this impact you?

{*shrugs*}

Not really.

So why are we all up in arms over it?

Why negatively judge someone else?

You’re not doing your kids any favors by teaching them to hate on someone over petty, pointless nonsense that, at the end of the day, doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Just keep on being the awesome mom you are, and leave other people alone.

The post Mom let her 12yo get a tattoo and everyone loses their shit. appeared first on The World 4 Realz.