Being a ‘Cool Mom’ is Not Worth Putting Actual Tattoos On Your Own Children

baby-tattooIt’s tempting to want to be the “cool mom.” You let your kids stay up late, watch R-rated movies, maybe even have a sip of beer under close parental supervision. But there’s a fine line between “cool mom” and “what the ever-living fuck mom,” and that line falls somewhere well before giving tattoos to adolescent children.

According to WGRZ, Chantilly L. Thomas, a mother in Jamestown, New York, was arrested last week for allegedly tattooing the hands of her 12- and 13-year-old sons. When I first read this, I assumed that it would be the case of police overstepping and overreacting to some temporary tattoos, or henna tattoos, or a lady drawing on her kids with a Sharpie marker, but I was wrong. Thomas allegedly used an actual, honest-to-God tattoo gun loaded with real tattoo ink and drew tattoos on the hands of her adolescent children.

Hand tattoos are serious business, too. An upper arm tattoo can be covered. Even a forearm tattoo can be hidden under a sleeve at a job interview. Hand tattoos are right up there with face and neck tattoos as the most serious and overt places to get tattoos. Face, neck, and hand tattoos should never be undertaken by anyone who has not given it a whole ton of thought, and definitely not by anyone who is under 18 years old.

Police say Thomas is not a licensed tattoo artist, so she should not have been giving tattoos to anybody, let alone children. She allegedly tattooed “Ride or Die” on the back of her 12-year-old son’s hand. That’s a pretty terrible choice of tattoo for a kid who is not old enough to ride or drive anything bigger than a bicycle. 

The 13-year-old got off relatively lucky by comparison and only got a lightning bolt tattooed on his hand, but still this was terrible. No licensed or trained tattoo artist would have agreed to do these tattoos, and that should have been a big red flag for everyone that these tattoos shouldn’t have happened.

(Photo: LisaValder/iStockPhoto/Getty Images)

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