@nav Kids can't get tattoos but can somehow undergo gender reassignment surgery, but that's a different topic.
It's believed baby's ear lobes are soft enough to not register pain when they actually do. The problems start with causing the child unnecessary pain. The other problem is why the actor feels it's necessary to do.
@nav Straightening teeth has some logic behind it, such as fixing crossbite or preventing misaligned teeth from causing pain. The idea is it saves on future costs of treating preventable conditions.
Piercing ears offers no such benefit, neither does straightening milk teeth (they'll fall out anyway and their replacements wouldn't inherit previous realignment efforts).
I have a philosophical question though. Like it seems generally accepted where I am in America for kids to get braces to straighten crooked teeth. But this seems cosmetic? Piercing a baby's ears feels unethical. But, if straightening crooked teeth is okay and piercing ears isn't, how do we make that distinction? Should parents not straighten their kids' teeth?
Probably a big distinction is that no one is straightening a *baby's* teeth. Maybe that's where it becomes unethical