Mom Shares Why She Shaves Her Baby's Head & Says He'll 'Thank Me Later'
Shaving her baby's head is a family tradition.
TikTok. One mom's uncommon approach to her son's haircare routine has bewildered TikTok users.
“He’ll thank me later, lol,” wrote TikTok user tator_totts under the video of her 5-month-old baby as she shows off his freshly shaved head.
“My mom did this to my brothers and they all have the best hair in the family,” she commented in her post.
RELATED: Dad Makes 16-Year-Old Daughter Shave Her Head After She Bullies A Girl With Cancer
The mom shaves her baby's hair so it will grow back thicker.
She posted on TikTok that she 'didn’t tell anybody,' but she shaved his head so that 'his hair grows back thicker and more even.' The post has 2.2 million views.
Utilizing the hashtags #buzz, #yolo, and #tradition, the mom claimed that her baby’s hair will be helped in the long run by her process.
A video from several months earlier shows the mom's baby boy with a full head of hair proving that she does, in fact, shave her son's head — and judging by his thick hair, it might be working!
RELATED: Mom Responds To Backlash Over Waxing Her 3-Year-Old Daughter's Eyebrows To Stop Her Getting Bullied
In some cultures and religions, shaving a baby's head is a tradition.
In Hinduism, parents often perform a mundan, a ceremony in which a baby’s birth hair is shaved off.
A mundan is performed four months to three years after a baby is born.
While this mom doesn't clarify if she shaved her son's head as part of a ceremony, she does claim it's a family tradition.
In many communities, a mundan is given as a way to purify the baby from negative energy from their past lives, cleansing the baby’s body and soul.
It’s believed that once the baby’s hair is shaved, the baby is free from the past and can move into the future.
A mundan is a symbol that the baby is beginning their new life, and that they’re free from the bonds of past births.
Shaving a baby’s head during a mundan is also believed to improve the growth of the baby’s hair.
Some scientific reasoning behind a mundan includes the belief that a baby’s body can absorb Vitamin D more quickly when exposed to sunlight without hair.
Many doctors recommend exposing newborn babies to sunlight to avoid conditions such as jaundice.
Yet a research paper conducted by NIH scientists proved that shaving doesn’t affect hair growth in any tangible way.
The hair that grows after a baby’s head is shaved only appears thicker because the tip of the hair becomes blunt, yet the roots of the hair remain the same after the hair is shaved.
No matter what the reason behind this mom shaving her son’s head might be, she’s continuing a family tradition that holds some sort of meaning to her.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.