1619 Frans Hals, Catharina Hooft with her Nurse (Detail)

CHILDREN can’t always articulate their thoughts and feelings. We can use intuition, common sense, practical knowledge and memories of our own childhoods to understand them. While parents generally have the best of intentions in making their children wear face masks, many people have serious concerns about this practice for the following reasons:

Masks have no proven physical benefits for children themselves. (See CDC mortality figures by age.)

Masks diminish oxygen inhalation, cause wearers to breathe in carbon dioxide and could affect physical development of children.

Masks are uncomfortable and cause children to touch their faces more.

Masks are impractical because they get dirty during play.

Masks lower spatial visibility and could lead to more falls during play and while walking or running.

Masks make it difficult for children to communicate by word and facial expressions.

Masks are frightening, which is why they have often been used in occult rituals.

Masks create general insecurity about the ability of adults to protect.

Masks make it difficult to read the thoughts and intentions of adults.

Masks create an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion, which may affect the psychological development and hopefulness of children.

Masks make it hard for strangers to convey friendliness and good will to children.

Masks are habit-forming and some children will have trouble giving them up.

Masks cause obsessive worry about germs in some children. This paranoia may stay with them for many years.

Masks are ugly and children are sensitive to ugliness, which affects their spiritual development in deep and hidden ways.

Masks endanger childhood innocence by surrounding children with fears of death.

Leaving aside the incalculable, life-sustaining pleasure children’s faces give to adults, especially the frail elderly, as anyone who walks into a nursing home with a baby in her arms will instantly discover, it might be only a slight exaggeration to say that for children, faces are everything. Look at the way a calm baby fixates on the faces around him in a crowd as he looks over the shoulder of the person holding him. He seems to absorb every individual detail of the faces he sees. He does not look at the inanimate things around him. He does not look at clothes or hair. He looks at faces. He has a genius for reflecting on facial personality. What adults may consider an ugly or insignificant face, babies and very young children may find fascinating. They don’t live by the same standards of facial beauty that adults do. It’s individuality that matters to them, which we can know because they hone in on a new face. Babies are often frightened by a new face, but that’s because its individuality is overwhelming and they need time to get to know and trust it.

To tell a mother to wear a face mask while nursing her baby (and to stay six feet away from her newborn as much as possible), as the Centers for Disease Control has done, is a crime against the vulnerable young.

Imagine the little girl in the beautiful 17th-century painting above sitting on the lap of a nursemaid in a mask. Would she be so content and curious? Or would she be fretful and nervous?

Faces are the natural habitat of children, who in some ways live on a much higher spiritual plane than adults. They know the face is the seat of the soul. They are born with this knowledge: Faces are immortal and we cannot thrive or maintain good health without the faces of others. We are human beings, not automatons or biological weapons.

— Comments —

“Loyal Reader” writes:

Spot on!  Whenever I am in a public place, I have noticed more and more children (even in strollers) with masks on.  Despite the CDC’s recent report on only 9,000ish deaths “attributed” to covid, despite the evidence from day 1 that children are nearly unanimously unaffected (with symptoms or even as “carriers”), I still see this insanity.  I always try to make eye contact and smile (because of course, I am NOT wearing a mask, and have no intention of ever doing this, by the grace of God).

More issues with masks and children:

Masks of course hide identities, so if a child was molested or a stranger tried to take them, how could they identify the perp – by their “unusual mask”?

The rise in Legionnaires disease, strep and staph infections of the lungs, mold and mildew (and foreign particulates and chemicals) being inhaled into the lungs.

Lack of oxygen stunts the brain’s development – OSHA oxygen testers indicate that the air within a mask is dangerously low in oxygen.

Creating hostility and dehumanizing themselves and others.  (I believe someone also remarked that, while wearing masks, how will young people become attracted to one another?)

We learn at an early age that plants need our CO2 in order to perform photosynthesis, which produces their (and our food).  One of the by-products of photosynthesis is, OXYGEN!  So we and the plants need each other’s “exhaust”.  If children are still being taught this basic fact in school, they must be very confused why we are starving the green plants.  Also, one would think that the environmentalists must also be very disturbed by the littering of used masks everywhere. Children are likely confused by this, too.

I was recently in a store where I looked down and saw two little children (under age 4) both wearing the masks.  I looked at them, made eye contact, smiled, and waved.  Within 10 seconds, each had pulled off his mask.  I grinned with delight, and so did they!

I can hardly wait to see the lawsuits that arise when months from now, employers who forced their employees to wear masks all day begin to be sued for creating lung and other health issues.  I know that sounds harsh, but I am tired of these places of business (especially the “big box” stores and restaurants) forcing this idiocy on their staff and customers, as well as universities doing this to their staff and students.

Laura writes:

Good points!

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