A child’s first haircut is one of many milestones in their young life, but one mother and a barber are being criticized for cutting an infant boy’s hair, with the general sentiment when watching the video being that the baby is way too young.
As you can see, the baby, whom the barber says is only 1 week old, is having a hard time coping with the haircut until his mom (finally) gives him a pacifier, begging, among many other questions, why she didn’t give him that sooner. But the biggest question here is why she felt the need to cut her child’s hair so fresh out of the womb.
The Harlem barber, who’s also being criticized for doing the cut, posted a response defending himself after the video went viral. According to him, the woman said her son’s hair needed to be cut for religious reasons and he had no choice but to respect that.
Some still refuted that explanation, questioning his inability to stand up for his own beliefs about when a child’s hair should first be cut and saying he sacrificed his morals for a few dollars.
Infant haircuts are not as uncommon as you might think, however, with a number of eastern cultures shaving boys’ heads at young ages –though none as young as 1 week old. The Chinese appear to be the fastest to cut babies’ hair, waiting just one month to shave it all off or simply trim it in modern times. As Lyuba Konopasek, assistant professor of pediatrics at the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, told Babycenter.com, “In some cultures parents shave a newborn’s head; in others it’s customary to wait until a child can speak to cut his hair for the first time, so there’s no hard and fast rule.”
Still, those who are even considering the mothers’ religious beliefs are what prompted the haircut are still questioning why someone from her religious sect didn’t perform the ritual instead of a random barber. Obviously, there are more questions than answers regarding this situation, but do you think the barber was wrong for respecting this mother’s wishes or was he just doing his job?
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