Cultural circumcision in babies/young boys

[junipermarten]

1 of my DS's is circumcised due to a medical issue, he was 3 at the time and it was bloody horrific.

When he was going through it, a good friend gave me tips on after care and offered the number of a private doctor. She has sons who were circumcised shortly after birth for religious reasons.

I personally don't agree with circumcision unless medically required however I respect others choices for religious reasons.

It got me thinking about the high % of boys in the US who are circumcised for cultural reasons, just over 2/3rds. Why is it so prevalent there?

I was having a look at % of male pop per country and the highest were mainly Islamic, but also Samoa was almost 100% which surprised me but apparently its cultural as opposed to religious (I think).

I never used to have an opinion on circumcision until I cared for a young baby, no more than 2 months old with a horrific infection in his wound.
I later found out that he needed a partial amputation to stop necrotic tissue spreading.

A little baby maimed for life, with zero chance of having a normal, healthy body and sexual function, purely because of the parents cultural backgrounds.

Totally against it now.

I didn't get my first circumcised when he was born as I felt there was no need. His father's culture have boys circumcised at 18 sort of transition into manhood whilst mine is more like the Jewish/Islamic (day 7). I wasn't bothered about it although friends and family did raise eyebrows.
When he was about 3 he started holding his urine and stopped drinking water as it hurt to pee. Turns out he's got phimosis. Couple of steroid creams later and uti's he had to be circumcised (privately at a cost of €2k each) at age 4 under GA. His18 month old brother was also done at the same time as he had a tight foreskin.
If I have another son (I won't) I will be taking him to either Belfast or England to have him circumcised. I don't want him to go through what my first went through.

We're Irish and in Ireland no baby under 12 months can be circumcised unless medically necessary.
We did have a surgery appointment for 4 months but decided to go privately due to the urgency and he was due to start school in a few weeks.

It was a largely smooth process and they both healed fine within 10 days. Youngest doesn't remember.

The experience changed my opinion on circumcision. It turns out that Balanitis xerotica runs in the family and could be why the males are routinely circumcised. This has been lost along the years and it has just become 'tradition'.

What potential complications? And what about the complications of the procedure itself?

I don’t think I can respect cultural or religious reasons for chopping off bits of a baby.

If your first son had problems with his foot, would you amputate your next child’s foot just in case?

Same. It’s utterly barbaric and completely outdated and we shouldn’t be afraid to say that.

I was horrified when my - UK born- ex moved to America and had his newborn circumcised. We’d been separated 15 years by that point and he’d never once ever talked about or mentioned anything about being okay with it before (our child together was a dd who was 18 at that time) and when dd told me he’d had his son done I was just absolutely horrified and disgusted. His wife is American and they just seem to do it routinely there and he just went along with it like the wet blanket he’s always been. Can’t respect him at all after that.

@SpaceMonitor potential infection complications under the foreskin, potential problems with too tight a foreskin.
having assisted with hundreds I was aware of the potential complications of the procedure which in the case of my sons was unlikely.

Oh, @greenspaces4peace, good to know you've children who are immune to complications of surgery. Must be nice

The only reason The NHS is involved with this is to try and prevent parents letting
some random with no medical training do it
Instead they should focus on providing the evidence for prosecuting any parent that does this

Yep agree with this.

Jews here. Both DH and DS done. It is the mark of being a Jewish man for us. Both DH and l lost family in the holocaust so it matters to us that DS is a 'true jew' DH has never had any issues and couldn't remember his, so no conflict for us

I think it's barbaric. I'm sorry if that causes offence, but when my tiny boy was born I would have ripped someone limb from limb who tried to hurt a hair on his head. DP was circumcised at 8, as was his father, around 8 for medical reasons (too tight foreskin). If DS needs that, of course we'll get it done.

DH has 2 best friends from school.

1 is Jewish and was done as a baby
DH is Christian and not done
The other converted to Islam in his mid 20s and was done as part of the conversion.

Interestingly neither the Jewish nor Muslim friend have circumcised their sons.

There's a documentary about male circumcision on netflix that's worth a watch. You get to hear the viewpoints of men who have been circumcised. Not all who have been are happy about it, and I'm imagining many of the sons of the mothers here advocating it probably don't want to tell their mums about the impact to their sex lives through loss of sensation.

You don't need a body modification to have faith or be a genuine member of your religious community (especially given its a part of your body that is generally covered up!)

You'd think by reading these comments that all uncircumcised men have horrid infections and foreskins that don't fit, but that surely can't be the case, given that they're born with it. It must be a tiny percentage of people with a genuinely malfunctioning foreskin.

I don’t think it matters whether the experience of being circumcised was good/bad etc.
Its still very wrong

I am really sorry about your families experience but I think it’s still pretty awful that you feel your son can only be a part of your religion if you cut a bit off him

How belief in good is linked to chopping off skin is beyond my comprehension. It should be banned except where truly medically necessary (certified by two doctors not linked, and ideally not two doctors in cahoots with each other!)

The obvious solution to balance cultural, religious & family traditions with the right to bodily autonomy in 21st century societies is to ban circumcision in children unless it is done by a medical professional for medical reasons. Then, when a boy turns 18 & becomes an adult he can make his own decision about what to do with his own body and is free to be circumcised if he wishes.

Also Jewish here, and we could argue also because of family lost in the Holocaust – (although I'm not sure any Jewish family alive today doesn't fall into that category) bodily autonomy is a huge part of our family values.

I see both sides, to be honest.

I understand the power and centrality of history, heritage, identity and tradition, particularly amongst persecuted peoples, and I also don't believe that someone's cultural identity has to be defined by their external appearance.

So much of what I'm proud of about Jewish identity is connected to this incredible tradition of questioning, challenging, re-evaluating, debating – I celebrate circumcision becoming a part of that evolution and conversation.

Bodies have potential problems though dont they

Tummies, ears, legs, bladders, eyes, teeth, tongues, skin,, the list is endless of conditions and disorders that children and adults can have

Why does this particular set of conditions mean that you have to maim and mutilate a child?

That's interesting. We were also london and struggled to find anywhere we could have it done. My DH wanted it done for cultural reasons but as it involved a drive to the other side of London plus the cost of the procedure and I said he would have to be the one who sorted it all out it never happened. I have 2 relatives who had it done when older (one a pre teen one an adult) and both found it awful in terms or recovery and said they wish they had it done younger but I assume they were unlucky in needing it and hopefully mu boys won't.

We should probably start removing babies appendixes just in case as well

@greenspaces4peace
That was my approach with DS. We had what we figured was good advice from doctors and went with it. No problems or complaints from DS in 29 years.

I also went ahead with all the required vaccinations on schedule.

I allowed my DDs to get their ears pierced - in Claire's - at age 7. Again, no regrets.

My late husband was American and was circumcised. We discussed the issue when I was pregnant with DD1 and he was fully on board with not circumcising any child of ours if male (we then had DD2 so it was moot in any case).

It's wrong unless for medical reasons, and anyone doing it for cultural or religious reasons is perpetuating mutilation of a perfectly created body.

My DH is circumcised, as was his DF. There was strong expectation from that side of the family that we'd get our boys done.

In the end we had no clear way to access it (in London!) and it seemed expensive and worrying at a point when we were already frazzled by new parenthood, so we ended up leaving their turtlenecks in place...

Interestingly I have a good friend who is a geriatric nurse, and she said her main perspective is that elder men who are circumcised have less infections in later life, when self-care gets more challenging. She said from her POV she's always relieved to see a new male patient is circumcised as less work for her! Which goes to show the "cleaner" logic has some basis, I guess?

But honestly I'd have struggled to do it to my own tiny babies.