Parenting

Are Kim & Kanye unfit parents for piercing baby daughter’s ears?

This morning, the world awoke to more shocking Kim Kardashian news: She and Kanye West marked their daughter North’s first birthday by piercing her ears with big ol’ diamonds.

The Internet lit up with self-righteous finger wagging and criticism, many questioning whether it was inappropriate to pierce a baby’s ears.

Some called it cruel and painful.

Others accused Kardashian for treating her daughter like a dress-up doll.

For the first time, I’m aligning myself with the big-bottomed team on this: Baby North looks sweet.

Besides, I’ve been wearing earrings since I was 8 months old — though my parents didn’t rob a South African diamond mine to get me stones that could be photographed from outer space.

They settled for little gold balls and tiny pearls in my delicate, baby earlobes.

My mom’s family is from Spain, where a girl’s ears are pierced as soon as she’s left the womb. And my father — who taught me how to kick a soccer ball, dribble a basketball and pace myself to run long distances like any boy on my block — thought they were requisite for female bundles of joy.

In my baby photos, I actually look like — gasp — a little girl.

As I got old enough to fuss with them and take them out, my father would send me home to retrieve them.

I always found it laughably puritanical that my friends waited until they were in training bras before they could have their ears pierced — as if those little steel starter studs were somehow sexual. It was treated like a rite of passage, welcoming the little girls into the sisterhood of maturity. Sometimes, they’d have to undergo another piercing, if the first grew infected or too painful.

I don’t know what it’s like to not have studs in my ears. And I don’t remember any pain associated with them. I have always worn pearls or my grandmothers’ diamond studs, eschewing any Salt-N-Pepa door knockers, so my lobes have been saved by restraint.

The other day, one of my college roommates came to New York with her family, including her precocious 7-year-old daughter — who begged her to let her get her ears pierced. My friend repeated the usual refrain, telling her she needed to wait until she was at least 9.

I winked at my little pal and, against my better judgment, told her I had my ears pierced when I was a baby. Though I respected my friend’s decision, I told her daughter I’d just witnessed her mother’s promise and would make sure she followed through.

Kardashian and her mercurial rapper hubby are flashy, crass and gauche. But are they unfit parents for piercing their young daughter’s ears? That’s a resounding no, as big as those rocks in her ears.