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On the right tracks?
13th Aug 2009
I am 53 and I don't remember anyone in my childhood who had braces fitted.
Was this because we all had wonderful straight and even teeth? I don't think so. My own teeth were neglected, due to ignorance or mishap, and heavily filled in the 1970s, where it seemed that dentists who catered for the masses were on a mission to fill as many teeth with ugly amalgam as possible. Of course, it may be that the well-heeled parents in those days took their gap-toothed offspring to orthodontists, but it was certainly not de rigeur for the ordinary, as it seems to be nowadays.
In the early 1980s I had two small daughters. We went regularly to the dentist and, subsequently, orthodontists and rows of tortuous-looking metal devices were fitted to their little mouths. My girls cried with sore gums and aching faces and I almost took them back to have the braces removed. Of course, as a doting mum, I always felt that straight teeth would only add to the given attractiveness of my two girls.
However, sitting in the waiting room on all those appointments, I couldn't help but wonder about the merits of fitting braces to the spotty or ugly that were lined up for the ministrations of the always apparently fraught NHS orthodontists.
There was always the implication that the NHS was doing an enormous favour for those of us who could not even contemplate the cost of private orthodontic care. I found it difficult to get appointments, and had a misplaced sense of guilt at having to pull the girls out of school if after-school appointments were not available.
Now, it seems that braces are often a fashion statement, with adverts for invisible braces for fully grown adults who have presumably managed to live adequately with a few gaps in their teeth or a crooked canine or two. The cynic in me would suggest that this is a trend which has evolved in our celebrity-obsessed world of trying to achieve perfection.
I recently read an article that suggested that scientific developments have successfully grown new teeth from stem cell therapy and that the boffins have achieved producing teeth in a test tube.
I just hope they will be straight and even!
Author
Eve Wolfson
Eve is a fiftysomething mother-of-two who spent the best part of her parenting years taking her daughters to dentists and orthodontists. She feels well placed to offer her perspective on dentistry from a patient patient's point of view...
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