Safety Concerns for Infant Earrings

In Asia it has been common practice for hundreds of years to pierce the ears of infant girls. There are millions of infant girls every year that have this done and rarely are there problems. In the western society there are many concerns about this practice and there appear to be incidents of infection and safety problems. This article briefly discusses reasons for these differences, between Asian and Western practice of infant ear piercing.

My wife is one of twelve children, of whom six are girls. Each girl had her ears pierced between their third and seventh day of first life after birth. The piercing was not done by a doctor but by the mother, who also had all twelve by natural birth without a midwife. The last was born in 1990. To do the ear piercing the mother used a sewing needle and for cleansing and anti bacterial protection she made herself virgin coconut oil. None of the six girls had any infection. Each girl immediately had a 22 karat gold earring. This earring is just slightly larger in diameter than the distance from the piercing and the ear lobe it surrounds. As the baby grows the size of the earring is exchanged or new ones are purchased with the gold saved for the child.

In the village the family is from there are over 1,000 successful births a year of which 53% are female. In that village a survey we did revealed that in the last 20 years, that's 20 x 530 = 10,600 female infants that had ear piercings, no one can remember and village health records show not one case of infection or problem from these ear piercings.

So how can a society that was still having women giving birth unattended, in 1990, have that many ear piercings with no reported problems, and while the same practice in western society is rife with worries about safety and health concerns. As a lay person I can only tell you that there are two things missing in western society in the ear piercing process; the virgin coconut oil ( which Asians believe has anti bacterial properties, and the use of 22 or 24 caret pure gold earrings.