Circumcision

It really doesn't matter what side people are on the data will speak one way or another.

 

I have no idea how to do a link on my phone, but there is a great recap of studies on both sides of the issue on wikipedia.

 

There is data on both sides of the issue. You are only suggesting that it doesn't exist on one side. I guess I don't respond well to demands for citation authority.

 

I just wanted to add one point. When I hear people suggest that uncircumcised penises are unclean or prone to infection, I wonder if people really think that large majorities on men in non-circumcising cultures really do have dirty, infected, unclean penises. Even if there was some medical benefit to circumcising infants in mass, do people really believe that infections in the non-ciring cultures are widespread. So if someone believes that noncircumsised men are prone to infections does he or she really think that most Chinese, Middle Eastern (Muslim), or European men have unclean, infected penises? To me that just as insulting to people in those cultures, as it is to suggest that pro-cir people are barbaric.

 

Honestly, I just wish people would stop using that cleanliness argument, and say they are doing it for cultural and/or aesthetic reasons. Whether it's unintentional or not, that argument doesn't have a lot of support (it's not like large majorities on non-cired men have infected penises), and it really comes off as insinuating that people in non-ciring cultures are unclean.

 

It's not even remotely a cleanliness issue for me. I don't think people get cancer because they are dirty. My decision was a combination of medical, cultural, and aesthetic.

 

My son is circumcised because my father is not. When I had my son, my father and mom had a very candid talk with me about what my father is been through (he is not). Since about his 40's he's had a lot of trouble related to not being circumcised. Knowing someone so close to me that has had problems as a result of not being circumcised caused me to choose to circumcise.

 

I know too many adults that have had to have it done and they say it was totally awful (Like my dh's grandfather at age 67). I had my sons circumsized as newborns -that way they won't have to worry about it as adults, it is already done and they don't remember it.

 

i think this is sort of what bothers me about circumcising infants - as an adult, if they are uncircumcised they can make the choice to circumcise (even if they'll remember the pain of the procedure), but once they're circumcised, they can't go back if they decide they'd prefer to be uncircumcised as an adult. i don't know. i guess i just figure that if someone had performed a medically unindicated procedure on me as an infant, that would bother me. :unknw:

 

I just figure as they get older - and if they want to be circ'd - they can request that and we will have it done. We were undecided anyway - and then when they were born at 35w, neither of us could justify the procedure on something so small! I was worried they would cut too much - and then how would I explain that to my adult son? :laughing: Once we were discharged from the hospital they told us that we could schedule an outpatient circ. when they turned 1 and they would need to go under general anesthesia. Again, for us, the risks of general anesthesia and infection outweighed the circ. being performed. But, I will happily schedule a circ. for them if they come to me as a teenager and request one.

 

The reason I started this thread was to get statistics, which I did Thanks everyone! I do wish it was a decision that could be made by my son (if we ever have one!) and one that wouldn't have to be as painful as an adult circ. So ideally, I would be able to fast forward time to talk to me future son at 20 and ask if he would like to be circumsized and if he says yes, I would like to go back to the week of his birth and get it done. I think I found the answer

My nephew wanted to get his done at 14 and my brother and SIL allowed it. The pain was immensely horrible for him, but it was his decision and he doesn't regret it (he is 18 now).

Reason for edit: spelling mistake!

 

None of my boys have ever told me that it bothered them they had it done as newborns but when dh's grandfather had it done ALL 3 of them thanked me that they had already had it done. I doubt many men sit around sulking and blaming their parents because they are circumcised I would tend to think they would rather not have to deal with it now if they even think about it at all.

 

i'm glad your boys are all thankful for having been circumcised.

but there are men who are angry about having had the procedure done for them when they were infants. here

 

Yeah, circumcision was really one of our first parenting decisions and we struggled with it... but in the end we figured if that's the worst parenting choice we ever make for our kids we're doing ok. Honestly, I can't even really define why I felt strongly about it. Hopefully my kids aren't angry with me down the road.

Here is a link to UNAIDS policy discussion around promoting circumcision as HIV prevention. I am really under the weather today so I can't be bothered to look up the rest of the links, but it does seem there's peer reviewed research.

And yes, of course condom use is the way to prevent HIV and other STDs, but as we see from infection rates that it is not being practiced enough. Circumcision may just be another weapon in the arsenal.

 

I know this is from a few pages back, but I do want to jump back to it. I admit that I did not make an informed decision about my DS's circumcision. Like I said in my post, I just did it without thought because that's what is common here. While in the NICU, I signed the consent for the procedure and for local anesthesia/pain medication which I assumed meant that it would be used. After the fact, I found out that only sugar water on a pacifier was used. Yes, it might provide a small amount of pain relief, but it is not as effective as other available methods. I feel horrible mom guilt that my son was subjected to that painful procedure. He doesn't remember it, obviously, but I do. That is why I would likely choose not to circumcise again unless I knew for certain adequate pain relief was going to be used.

 

This is interesting. The site implies that all men are unhappy with circumcision which doesn't make sense at all. A large majority of us who have circumcised sons, did so because our DHs wanted it that way. If they're so angry about it, why would they subject their infant sons to it?

I have a hard time getting too worked up about it. I had some feelings of uncertainty and am not sure what I would have done if the decision had been up to me. But at the end of the day, we all make decisions that affect our children. By the time they are grown up, they will have legitimate reasons to be angry at us. Why is circumcision so different?

 

I guess I have a difficult time understanding why men would even think about "being angry" that their parents circ'ed them...I wonder if those same men are angry that their parents subjected them to vaccines in childhood too...

there is ALWAYS going to be someone that you WILL never make happy - and I certainly don't intend to discuss Ian's circ with him when he's 18 to find out if he's "unhappy"...

 

i guess it seems different to me because it's a decision that could, relatively safely, be put off until adult hood & made by your child, for himself. if it were me, i would prefer the decision to be my own.

the data was from a self-selected group of men so it isn't possible to extrapolate it to the general population. i expect that most men are either happy that they have been circumcised, or feel neutral about it. my point was only that some men are angry about it.

 

Isn't it interesting the thought processes we all employ? My thinking is that I am glad we had it done immediately while we were all still in the hospital and there would be no recollection of any of it as an adult. It was really such an insignificant thing so far as it was not overly traumatic nor did it seem to cause them much discomfort as infants whereas waiting until they are older or adults seems as if it would be much more traumatic of a procedure.

Really, I don't think it was that huge of a deal and I think whatever parents decide to do, circ or not, it's not really my business. As long as people are comfortable with the choice they made for their boy(s), who could argue with that?

 

I just told Sean about this topic and he just laughed and said he didn't feel any remorse over not having a foreskin. *whew* :rofl: I guess I can get over the mommy guilt on this one now :lol: I would guess that the majority of circumcised adult males in this country feel similarly, despite the group mentioned earlier.

ETA: I am, btw, poking fun at myself here. No one else. DH calls me "Rex" because like in Toy Story, "I have guilt!" and over lots of things where it comes to my kids. Such a mom thing.

 

It is not common in England to have a circumcision unless done for religious purposes and we brits take the whole consent bit very very seriously, so a medically unnecessary surgery done without the patients own consent it not really something many would be happy to perform.
My boys were preemies, barely 3 pounds apiece and I never thought about having their willies touched, however one of them had quite bad phymosis and when he had to go under for something else we asked for that to be fixed too, they circumcised him then. In retrospect I am unsure if maybe his penis was just too small to just operate on the phymosis without going full circ or if they thought that would be better, in an case he is circumcised while his twin is not. They have asked and we explained, both are ok with their very different looking willies (their penises are different in size and shape on top of the foreskin issues). Personally I think hygiene and a good sex education with particular attention on barrier protective method will protect them far better from disease and infection than a circumcision.

A thought though: my youngest daughter was born in Spain and here getting ears pierced shortly after birth is common practice, we forgot to ask for it not to be done and so she came home 24 hours old and wearing little golden stubs. This also is (to me) unnecessary, but she won't remember the pain while her sister who may get them done at some point later in life (today at 3 and a half she has unpierced ears) probably will. This to me is fairly similar in that the arguments are the same, she won't remember it vs painful moment for something that is mainly about optical beauty (and again yes, there are some papers on circumcision and AIDS but I personally think education will go a much longer way). Big difference, if Mione does not fancy her earings when she is 20, she can take them off though, while the penis will never uncircumcise itself...

I do not think it is a huge deal, my husband is uncirced and he is happy that way, 2 of my brothers are too, my youngest brother was circumcised aged 14 and he thought it was terrible, in his case it was due to some penile problems and he needed testicular surgery as well plus he had a bilateral hernia repair, so it was not just that, the whole region was worked on and I understand that he was very sore afterwards, he was in pain for about a week, but he does not seem to have long lasting trauma from it.
So for me I do think that men should be educated on it and have the right to chose at an adult age if they want to have it done (unless for religious or medical easons it is necessary in childhood). In the end it is their penis and they should have the right to decide what to do with it, BUT I also think most men will not be traumatised by having it done in infancy. To me I geuss it boils down to what I was taught at medical school, informed consent is most important and something unnecessary should be abstained from until the individual is old enough to chose.
I do not condemn anybody who had their kids circ'd though. As said I think a man will go through far bigger trauma in their life than having no foreskin and of not... well then lucky them!
M.

 

I was going to say something similar as Amy/Tony..."how do we mess up our kids, let me count the ways"

Until our kids are 18, there are so many decisions we have to make and I'm sure our kids will be mad about at least some of them. But I understand why this one (along with vaccinations) creates so much discussion.

We cir'd Jake because we are Jewish...so clearly it's a cultural norm for us.....I wonder if the increasing distance from our cultural center, combined with the "information superhighway" has lead to more questioning of things that were once done without question. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just that back in the day maybe certain things just "were" and people didn't spend a lot of energy asking questions.

 

I think for sure the internet has led to people doing more overt questioning of things that before we did without question.

In terms of circ though, from what I understand, it some circles it would have been much less common "back in the day" then it is now. Before babies were routinely born in hospitals circ was rarely done except in terms of religious or cultural reasons. So, while circ is an old tradition, for many non-Jewish poor and rural people I would imagine it used to be less common before the rise of hospital childbirth and increased medical intervention for both mother and baby. I am sure it depends on the region, etc. Where I live in the rural southern U.S, few babies were born in the hospital before the 1940s, so it used to be much less common here. Now it is very common.

As an aside, a quick google search yielded this interesting site:
http://www.historyofcircumcision.net/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=31

The webpage and researcher have an anti-circ bias, but it is interesting in terms of the timeline.

 

On the first point, yeah, I agree that there are a million things we do without our kids permission, but I think the vaccine one and circumcision are not an equal or fair comparison at all. Vaccines save lives, and you're not going to find any reputable epidemiologist who is going to argue that circumcision saves lives en masse. For example, polio kills and maims people; having a foreskin does not.

On the bolded part, I totally agree. I'm totally being a sociology nerd here, but this guy made a good argument about how society has shifted from a culture of traditional authority to one of rational authority. He was writing like a 100 years ago, but his basic argument was that with industrialization and bureaucracy would became a society that valued rational arguments and ideas. What made something rational was the it followed rules, was practical, and efficient. On the other hand, traditional authority comes from things like traditional religions, family traditions, and cultural traditions. So with traditional authority we do things because--that's how they've always been done or that's what my family/culture/religion believes. The internet probably amps up our use of rational authority even more because we are able to access more information outside of our family/culture/religion. There are rational pro-cir arguments (the cleanliness argument would be one example) and there are rational anti-cir arguments (the whole it's unnecessary and or potentially harmful would be another rational one). I suppose traditional arguments are still alive a well--the it's done in my culture or my family arguments would definitely be examples of that, but I think more and more people feel the traditional arguments are insufficient and need to be bolstered by rational arguments.

(I know I need to get back into the classroom don't I :laughing:, but kids just aren't ready for Social Theory 101 when we're still working on Poop on Potty 102. This discussion definitely reminds me of that lecture on sociological theory. )

 

This is a good point Rachel, I think we have started to question everything around us, and this is a good thing. We keep coming up with better ways of doing things because of it. I also think it's to our detriment sometimes; it's exhausting examining every choice we make wondering whether we're doing it for the right reasons. So for a procedure that isn't necessarily harmful, is going the traditional route a bad thing? I don't think so. And traditions are what makes families unique and ties us to our history. I wouldn't want to live an entirely rational life... I am not a Vulcan!

 

ost:

I also don't think you can even compare an infant circ procedure to an adult procedure. The pain and invasiveness of the procedure (VS Surgery) are totally different. One takes literally 5 minutes and doesn't even need a pain killer. The other requires general anesthesia which means it's a major surgery.

 

Can anyone answer why it can be done so quickly and with little to no anesthesia when it is done on a newborn (up to a few days old) and cannot be done again until they are 1 year old and has to be done under general anesthesia? I'm just curious. My DH and I couldn't justify putting our 1 year olds under general anesthesia for something that wasn't necessary, neither one of us tolerates anesthesia well and it just wasn't something we were willing to do. But it seems strange to me that what is ok for a newborn is not ok for a 1, 2, or 12 month old baby?

Thanks in advance!

 

I was hoping you would chime in, I'll have to check out your links...

 

Doing it on the 8th day for the jewish religion has a scientific component, babies have a peak of blood clotting factors on day 8 and therefore the surgery is much less risky on that day than on any before that, as the baby is likely to not bleed much at all that day. How many babies it was tried out on on different days until they settled on the 8th day we will never know!

Why they do it without anesthesia... I don't really know but I think it has to do with risk plus baby being unable to complain. I do think it probably hurts the little ones at least a little bit and I am glad my son was under when his was done; on adults and adolescents they can do it with an epidural (I have done a few on adults with an epidural in place) but with kids they tend to put them under as they are likely to move or get distressed. On babies I guess they think that anaesthesia is more risky than the pain they go through is bad.
M.

 

They won't put them under general for elective surgery until 6 months. Our pediatric urologist would have done it after that. We had Jack's recirc done at 10 months. I think the actual surgery was 30 minutes or so. It was 45 from when they took him into the OR until they updated us. There is a lot of growth from newborn to almost a year.

 

We used lidocan (sp) to numb the area and Jake was 8 weeks old (due to his low birth weigh we had to wait for a bris). He screamed for a minute or two and than was fine (albeit tired). He was given wine (as is the jewish tradition) to suck on via gauze i think and some Tylenol. Read some of those links, definitely food for thought...

 

Wow. Have to very much disagree with you here.

How do we know how much pain is involved for the newborn? We don't. They have no way of telling us. Just because they can't verbally tell us how bad it hurts does not mean it does not hurt. I can not logically understand how it can be argued that what causes great pain and discomfort to an adult would have no effect on a baby. Where are you getting this information?

There have been studies done (be happy to look them up if people want references) that suggest for some babies they go into a form of shock afterwards, hence why some babies don't cry that much after a circ. I am not saying that to be inflamatory. Just can not let this comment go without providing a differing opinion.

In the end though babies are non-verbal, and ultimately we can't know how they feel. However, we can make some fairly rational assumptions based on our own human capacity for pain.

ETA: I am not trying to make a anti-circ statement here, I am just trying to argue that we should not assume that babies don't feel any pain during it. For many people it may be a procedure that needs to be done, for whatever reason. But I think we must be upfront about the possibility for pain.

ETA2 --Just also wanted to clarify I am referencing the times when no pain killer whatsoever is used, as is sometimes the case.

In recent years, as I understand it, docs are more and more often using a topical numbing med.

 

I have never seen a circ done without pain meds/numbing meds and I assist with a lot of circs every day. Not only do the OBs numb it, we give the baby sucrose during and after for comfort. Sucrose has been found to keep babies more comfortable during painful procedures by measuring respirations and heartrate. I will admit I had my son circ'd because it seemed like the thing to do. I was 18 and uneducated. Now, I am educated, I have seen a ton of them performed and I would still do it again. It seems like the worst part for the babies is having their legs put in velcro straps to hold them down. I am glad I actually get to see circs done because it SOUNDS so barbaric to me but, IMO, it is a very short procedure that is a lot less dramatic than it sounds. ONCE AGAIN...this is my opinion. What other people do with their penis' is not my business.

 

Well now, I'm going to have to disagree. My son had it done at 3 days and then again at ten months. Leaving aside his signs of distress (which were non-existent at birth and not that bad at ten months), it is visually a more serious surgery. He had to be put under general anesthesia, he had a wrap on his penis, there was significantly more bruising, swelling, and bleeding. It's not even remotely the same procedure--even from birth to ten months. That said, it wasn't awful at ten months, but it was ten times worse than at the newborn stage.