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 The nationally-representative poll asked parents of kids between the
ages of 13 and 18 for their attitudes about tattoos. Most, 75
percent, thought the earliest a teen should be allowed to have a
tattoo was at age 18 or older, according to the results published by
the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's
Health.
Those numbers include some parents who have tattoos themselves: 32
percent of those surveyed.
The subject had not yet come up in many households, with just 27
percent of parents of teens aged 16 to 18, and 11 percent of parents
of kids aged 13 to 15 reporting that their child had asked about
getting body art. Five percent of parents said their teen already
had a tattoo.
"It's important for parents to know what other parents are
thinking," said Dr. Gary Freed, a pediatrician at the University of
Michigan and the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor and
co-director of the National Poll on Children's Health. "It is
increasingly becoming a topic of conversation in homes across
America."
A Pew Research Center study found that some 38 percent of young
people aged 18 to 29 have at least one tattoo.
Among Mott Poll participants, 1 in 10 parents said a tattoo would be
"okay" as a reward or to mark a special occasion. Those parents were
among the 22 percent who weren't adamantly opposed to tattoos in
teens, Freed said.
Freed thinks that parents whose children have insisted that everyone
else is getting a tattoo will be encouraged by the new survey
results.
Parents' biggest worries involved the potential health effects of
getting inked: 53 percent said that they were very concerned about
infection or scarring, while 50 percent said they were very
concerned about diseases such as hepatitis or HIV being transmitted
to their teen through unsanitary needles.
That doesn't mean parents were completely anti-tattoo. Nearly
two-thirds, 63 percent, agreed that getting a tattoo is a form of
self-expression similar to hair dying and clothing choices.
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Nevertheless, they expressed concerns that tattoos might have social
consequences. Half of parents surveyed were very concerned that an
employer might judge or stereotype their teen unfavorably because of
a tattoo, while 24 percent worried that a teen tattoo would reflect
badly on the parents themselves. The biggest concern, however, was
that teens might come to regret getting a tattoo later on.
Parents' concerns about the potential for future regret are
certainly justified, said Dr. Sarah Chamlin, a professor of
pediatrics and dermatology at Northwestern University's Feinberg
School of Medicine and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital
of Chicago.
"Most tattoos cannot be completely removed," said Chamlin, who was
not involved with the new survey. "It is a permanent decision in
many cases."
Often there's a hint of the tattoo left in the skin even after the
body art is removed, Chamlin said. "Look at the movie stars who have
tried to remove theirs and you can often still see the tattoo
faintly."
The risk for health effects is also real, Chamlin said. "There are a
number of problems we've seen with tattoos," she added. "There can
be allergic reactions to skin dyes. An itchy rash at the site can
show up years later. You can also get a skin infection and
scarring."
Complications such as transmission of blood-borne diseases are less
likely "so long as the practitioners are safely using their
equipment and keeping it clean," Chamlin said.
To avoid those kinds of issues, Freed suggests caution in choosing a
tattoo artist: "Make sure if you do get a tattoo that the tattoo
artist wears gloves and that everything gets sterilized."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2nU9Oy4 Mott Poll Report, online August 20,
2018.
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