Circumcision: Is It Right for Your Baby Boy?

You can always tell your intact son that "Everyone's penises look a little different - just like everyone's eyes, noses, and fingers"

That will probably be enough but if they persist you can continue, "When Daddy was a baby, doctors thought baby boys should have this part taken off. But it turns out they were wrong. So we decided to keep yours like this because (a) that is the way God made you (b) we thought cutting it would hurt."

Both my boys said THANK YOU! They don't want to have part of their body cut off.

Find a video of this before you have it done to someone you love.

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Circumcision isn't right for ANY baby. How sickening and tragic that we protect our girls from genital mutilation, yet routinely hack up boys based on falsehoods and misconceptions.

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Shame on Parentdish for this ridiculously biased article. Did the author look at any current research at all? Circumcision is deemed by almost all medical bodies to not be medically necessary. In my eyes it is then unethical to amputate a healthy functioning part of a baby just for cosmetic/social reasons.

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" parents should first consider whether or not the father is circumcised.

"If so, then proceed, if no then do not do it," he says. "Because when this boy grows up, he will be very different from his father."

What kind of logic is that? I have four tatoos, should I have tattooed my daughter at birth so we could match?
When my husband and I researched this subject in preparation for having a baby boy, he actually went through a period of mourning over his foreskin when he understood what exactly it was that he had lost. Why would he subject his son to that?
Circumsizing for medical reasons is ignorant. Mutilating and torturing an infant for cosmetic reasons is nothing less than evil.

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My son is 4, and uncircumcised. He has never had a UTI or yeast infection. He's not retractable yet, but I'm still teaching him proper hygiene practice for his bottom area. Cleaning him up as a baby was a cinch since I didn't have a circumcision wound to keep from getting infected, nor did I have to watch for a re-growing foreskin. I am confident that he, along with the around 80% of the rest of the male population of the world, will have no issues with being intact, and I believe in the long run he will be healthier for it. His father was cut, but that doesn't matter to us, so it won't matter to him. He will learn to use condoms to protect himself from STIs, especially HIV and AIDS, since they are the safest way to protect oneself whether cut or uncut. He will know that his parents aren't hypocrites because unlike some people, we're vehemently against all genital mutilation, not just for females. He will see that the natural male form is as highly regarded in our household as the natural female form.

Male circumcision is mutilation. There's no way around that. It is only in rare cases that removal of the foreskin is medically necessary. Any non-medical reason is merely the selfishness of the parents. Plain and simple fact.

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THIS is a reason to consider circumcising? "A slightly lower risk of urinary tract infections (UTIs). A circumcised infant boy has about a 1 in 1,000 chance of developing a UTI in the first year of life; an uncircumcised infant boy has about a 1 in 100 chance of developing a UTI in the first year of life." So if you circumcise 1000 boys, 990 would never have got a UTI, while one will get a UTI anyway. And UTIs can be treated without surgery, as they always are in 40/1000 girls. (The figures are based on the work of Thomas Wiswell on a highly skewed sample of boys born in military hospitals, where the main reason for escaping circumcision was premature birth, which has its own risks of UTIs)

The article's truest statement is that the decision is a deeply personal one - which is why it should only be made by the person most deeply involved, the penis's owner.

The fact that these figures can be seriously offered as "a reason to consider circumcising" just shows how desperate for reasons the circumcision lobby is.

As for looking like his father. When ANY boy grows up he will look very different from his father. I like the response of the woman who, when her husband gave that reason and said that was why he had been, picked up the phone and said, "Let's call your father over and compare them side by side."

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I completely agree with all the comments so far condemning circumcision. I think that ground has been covered well by others. But also...this article is very poorly constructed. What about discussing both sides of the story? Didn't anyone edit this, double-check it for content, or anything?? Citing statistics and "science" from other sources without questioning the validity is bad journalism. What about studies from the other side? Are we to understand that the CDC's crap is the last word on the matter?

And, yes, that final quote suggesting that the condition of the father's penis should be the guide for his newborn...well, that was just asinine.

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About six months ago the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed a mild form of female circumcision in which a doctor would make an incision (cut) or prick a girl genitals which would cause some minor bleeding and perhaps on a rare occasion some scaring in order to "protect" those girls from being taken to Africa to be circumcised in a more extreme manner and people became rightfully very upset over it because even that minor form of female circumcision is wrong because it violates human rights. Now seeing as human rights are not affected by gender the equivalent performed on a boy is also wrong which logically means that more invasive, more painful, more bloody, more dangerous procedures on males or females for non-therapeutic reasons or cultural reasons, or religious reasons are also wrong because they violate those very same human rights which the AAP wished to violate when it tried to bring back medically endorsed female circumcision and apparently ParentDish is like the AAP in that they ignore human rights and cling to excuses to violate the very precious and very sacred human rights of male children.

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this is the most stupid, uninformed article ever written on the subject. Up to the parents? How about the individual? What a violent human rights violation. Lets give the child sugar.

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All problems cause to the infant prepuce are not from having one but from improper care by an older person. UTI means Urinary Track Infection not the prepuce and can be avoided by proper care. The masculine and feminine prepuce both look wierd but feel great to have healthy ones.

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This is ridiculous. I am so thankful to come from a European and Canadian background so that I know first hand how normal it is to not have any body parts altered at birth and that nobody suffers medical or hygiene issues later in life because of it.

I wish people were better educated regarding this - so many believe the myths (many of which are included in this article, unfortunately).

Sadly, in the state in which I currently, there is a high circumcision rate. When I delivered each of my sons the nurses and doctors were quite pleased that I did not have them circumcised. Both times I had staff tell me that if they knew what they know now and could do it over again they would have chosen not to have their children circumcised.

I have found a strong correlation among my peers: the more educated they are (in general, not just on what circ info they've researched) the less likely they are to do this to their children. Also, the less "culturally isolated" (for lack of a better term - it's early!) they are, the less likely they are to do this to their children.

My boys' genitals look 'different' from my husband's, as they should (nowhere in the world does a small child's private area resemble that of a grown man's). If, at some point, my children do happen to question it I will be completely honest with them. And I'm confident they will be thankful that I didn't choose to have someone remove a perfectly normal, healthy, and functional body part from them. If they want to have it done later in life, that's their choice. Anyone but a newborn would be properly sedated for this cosmetic procedure as well as supplied with adequate pain relief.

It's unfortunate that this is even a debatable topic.

I just thought of something. I've changed a lot of boys' diapers before when I used to babysit and I know that even circumcised penises don't look alike. Just saying.

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I'm not any kind of activist, but I agree that this is really poor coverage of the issue at hand. It reads more as a reassuring pat on the head to those who want to circumcise without worrying themselves with unpleasant thoughts of complications or potential ethical dilemmas: "There, there ... the rates ARE dropping, but it's just a temporary blip on the radar screen. There's no REAL reason to listen to the arguments of those who oppose this recommendation. There are still lots of ways you can justify having a totally elective surgery on your healthy newborn boy!" Yuck.

I can't believe no one's addressed this yet:

"However, some opponents say circumcising newborns in the U.S. is a strategy that wouldn't pay off for decades."

Really? Which opponents say that? And is that *all* they have to say on the matter? Because it seems to me that the primary true, eminently logical reason to oppose adopting this strategy in the U.S. is the fact that an overwhelming majority of our adult males are already circumcised, and yet our rates of HIV infection are among the worst in the developed world. Epic fail. The above excerpt is perhaps the most simplistic and biased summation of the argument against recommending newborn circumcision to prevent HIV transmission in the U.S. that I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot.

I don't even know what to say about the recommendation to choose or avoid newborn circumcision based on the father's status. Funny, but in previous generations, when most circumcised boys had fathers who won't circumcised, nobody seem concerned about any psychological trauma that might result from this failure to "match". (Hint: Perhaps that's because it doesn't happen?) There is ZERO empirical evidence to support such a claim. How a so-called professional can get away with dispensing such ludicrous and baseless medical advice about a permanent procedure performed on an unconsenting newborn is beyond me.

This piece is crying out for a counterpoint. Please, if you want to have any credibility left, rethink this article and its content.

Signed,
A regular old mom of an intact boy and wife of a circumcised husband, both of whom are quite happy that they don't match

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Nope. Sorry. You got that wrong. It's not "up to the parents". This is a boy's decision when he is an adult for his body and no one else's. Baby boys are not objects, they are people with human rights. If you don't like the way we enter the world, then don't have children. Try getting a puppy instead. If it's a boy puppy, try getting the vet to "circumcise" him, and guess what, it won't happen. Taylor making children is a selfish, maniacal mental disorder, which should be outlawed.

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OK, seriously, why in the world would you be born with something that needs to be cut off (except for extreme circumstances, of course)? To me, removing the foreskin is no different than cutting off someone's outer ear or vaginal lips. We have these body parts to protect our bodily orifices from all sorts of outside influences. Mother Nature/God, whatever your preference, has a reason for us being born with what we have. It is scary to me that circumcision was the norm for so long. My husband is un-snipped and so is my 4-month-old baby boy. I wouldn't imagine putting either of them in such needless pain. It's like when people decide to dock their puppy's ears or tail, for crying out loud! WHY? And if anyone ever rejects my son sexually for his natural appearance, then they aren't worthy of his affection in the first place. Bottom line: you're born with it for a reason. Not something to take lightly just because everyone else is doing it.

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It has been pointed out that the "Because when this boy grows up, he will be very different from his father." stuff is nonsense -- certainly not appropriate for a doctor to say as advice. I think the best way to look at this is the doctor is nnot giving advice but he has some agenda -- to push circumcision on infant boys, or in the alternative he is incompetent and should have his licence revoked. I am leaning toward the incompetent side as what medical professional really thought you can cut into erogenous tissue, veins and about 20000 nerves and deal with the pain by giving the baby sugar? What a barbarian numb skull l!!!!!!

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A new study reveals sugar may not relieve pain in newborn babies after all.

Oral sucrose is often given to infants undergoing invasive procedures, like circumcision, to help with pain. But after monitoring the brains of babies undergoing a needle stick to the heel, researchers found sucrose did not actually reduce pain activity. It just changed their reaction.

Researchers say sugar blunts or inhibits the facial expressions of babies after painful procedures, giving the false impression their pain is being relieved.

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the decision was left up to my grandfather... he had one at 17 years old. He says he wished his mother would have had it done at birth. He had many problems before that, i know not everyone has problems, but his account of this procedure helped make the decision for my sons. None of them are damaged or whining little jerks that some of you seem to be.

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