Links for June, 2024

Tattoos, Fertility, Tradition, Fragmentation, Homeschooling

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Here’s a monthly roundup of items from around the interwebs.

Getting Ink

This sad piece in The Free Press describes a West Virginia town where many kids are being raised by grandparents because their parents are on opioids. It’s the least important thing about the article, but I couldn’t help noticing one of the mamaws had an armful of tattoos — something I never saw on a grandmother when I was young.

Then, going to some children’s events this month, I noticed how many other parents have visible tattoos, sometimes whole sleeves.

Sociologist and painter James Tucker pointed me to this article on the increasing frequency of tattooing among Americans: Among those aged 30-49, 46% have at least one, and 32% have more than one. In contrast, among people over 65, 13% have at least one, and only 5% have more than one.

I bet it would be even rarer in my grandparents’ cohort (now mostly over 90 or departed). Ideally, you’d find some older data from when this cohort was younger, since getting a tattoo is correlated with risk-taking so tattooed people disproportionately select out of cohorts as they age.

This is one of many topics where I’d like to see a purely sociological theory but lack the wherewithal to come up with one myself. C’mon, kids, “The Behavior of Tattoos” is just waiting to be written.

Maybe one can start with this presentation by anthropologists Will Buckner and Melina Sarian: “The Evolution of Body Adornment: Tattoos and Body Adornment in Hunter-Gatherer Societies.”

There’s also a book on The History of Tattooing.