When I was a kid, my mom would threaten to put Tabasco sauce on my fingers to keep me from gnawing at my nails. Her attempts to stop my compulsion were in vain; I turned to nail biting whenever I felt anxious, scared, shy, nervous, or bored. Luckily I grew out of the habit, but others don’t.
It’s estimated that as many as 33 percent of children under the age of eleven bite their fingernails and that number increases among teenagers and drops off as people reach adulthood. Nail biting—which includes chewing at the cuticles or the skin surrounding the nail, too—occurs more frequently than any other nervous habit (such as hair pulling or thumb sucking). Knowing of so many fellow sufferers has always made me wonder—why do we seek comfort by literally biting the hands that feed us, and just how risky is this act?
Maybe We Can Blame Our Parents
No one knows for sure what causes onychophagia (the medical name for nail biting) or why it starts at such young ages. Stress and medical issues are listed as potential culprits, as are low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and family history. Some believe that genetics play a role in nail biting, as it tends to run in families. Others argue that nail biting is a learned behavior, which would also explain the familial link. If a small child sees her parents biting their nails in times of stress or inactivity, she might try it out and derive pleasure from the action, thus sparking a habit.
A Symptom of Oral Fixation
Freud believed that nail biting, like everything else in life, is related to sex. He believed it was just another characteristic of people with an oral fixation, or the constant desire to put things in our mouths as a form of stimulation. (This might explain why I graduated from nail biting to chronic gum chewing.) According to Freud, all babies go through this stage. If they aren’t treated properly, they never move past this dependency and develop oral fixations. Overeating, smoking, chewing on pens, and even seemingly unrelated behaviors like alcoholism and sarcasm are also listed as oral fixation indicators.
Acceptable at Thirteen, Not so Much at Thirty
Regardless of the trigger, most kids engage in some sort of nervous habit and nail biting is the most common. It is a way for them to deal with stressful and anxious situations. Because it is such an oft-occurring habit, nail biting is usually not a cause for alarm (i.e., it doesn’t necessarily mean your child has some kind of disorder). The best way to wean kids off their fingers is to figure out what they’re worried about in the first place and address those concerns. The worst thing to do is to threaten punishment (I told you, Mom!) or make youngsters feel like they’re doing something wrong. This will only increase their anxiety. Make them aware of the behavior without being negative.
Nail biting is most common between the ages of ten and eighteen, and roughly 10 to 15 percent of adults over the age of thirty still bite their nails. Since the majority of people are able to outgrow the habit, why are some unable to kick nail biting to the curb? Like any other stress-related behavior, some are better at controlling it than others. It could be that most people learn to deal with stress in new, less obvious ways or develop other ways to cope with boredom or nervousness. With age comes an awareness of social norms and proper public behavior, so we adopt less public (and therefore more socially acceptable) coping strategies. Plus, some resort to nail biting more frequently than others, so it makes sense that they could abandon it more easily. I wasn’t that much of a nail biter as a kid, but a friend who still bites his nails used to chew them down to nubs when he was younger.
