Tipsheet

NY Punishes Parents for Letting Kids Get Tattoos, But Is Fine With Gender Reassignment Surgeries

A mother has been arrested for allowing her 10-year-old son to get a tattoo in New York, where it’s legal for surgeons to perform gender reassignment surgeries and hand out puberty blockers. 

According to The New York Times, a school nurse called the police last month after the boy came to her office asking for Vaseline for the new tattoo.

It is illegal in the state for people under the age of 18 to get inked regardless of whether they have parental consent.

The Times went on to discuss the trend of young people getting tattoos, quoting a physician aligned with the American Academy of Pediatric Medicine opposed to the “troubling” practice.

 

Yet as societal mores around tattooing shift — nearly half of all millennials have tattoos, compared with only 13 percent of the boomer generation, according to a 2015 survey by the Harris Poll — there is a wide spectrum of responses to tattoos on young people. There is no federal minimum age for tattoos, and state laws vary widely. Some mirror New York’s strict over-18 rules. Some permit tattooing with parental consent for people as young as 14 years old. About a dozen, including Ohio, West Virginia and Vermont, allow it with parental blessing and do not specify any minimum age.

It is a situation that Dr. Cora Bruener, a pediatrician and professor at the University of Washington Medical Center’s Seattle Children’s Hospital, and author of guidance on tattoos for pediatricians, issued by the American Academy of Pediatric Medicine, finds troubling.

“It is a permanent mark or a symbol you are putting on your body, and I don’t think kids under 18 have that kind of agency to make a decision,” Dr. Bruener said. “We need to look at these laws again.”

Conservatives pointed out the glaring double standard.