When it comes to piercings, many parents decide it’s not a battle worth fighting. Until the piercings multiply. Most of us have some unease with the “statement” a teen seems to be making with multiple piercings in increasingly “creative” places on the body. The question of what to allow seems to boil down to two questions: Do piercings make a “statement” we don’t want our kids to make? And are piercings safe? The Journal of Family practice reported on a study showing that multiple piercings DO seem to be correlated with some negative behaviors such as lower academic performance, greater drug use, and risky sexual behavior. Recently, the Chicago Tribune reported on a study by Northwestern University that shows that a disturbingly high 20 percent of piercings result in bacterial infections. Some piercings can cause other problems such as broken teeth, gum damage, interference with X-rays and MRIs, and even death from infections that reach the heart or other vital organs. The article goes on to point out that nearly a fourth of millenials (those born in the 80s and 90s) are pierced somewhere other than their earlobes.
