Newborn circumcision

[Mumtobe2025x3]

Hi all,
my son is five weeks old. My husband is Muslim and I’m COE. When we were pregnant we had discussed having my son circumcised when he was a couple of weeks old due to my husband’s religious beliefs, which I agreed to.

Of course marrying a Muslim man I knew of what came with it when it came to having children etc. we have discussed our sons upbringing and he will be taught both cultures, religions and celebration Christmas and Eid etc. my husband is quite westernised so he’s not exactly a strict Muslim.

I suffered quite bad baby blues and when it came to discussing the circumcision at around 10 days old I lost it and said that I couldn’t deal with it right now and my husband said not to worry now and we will revisit at a later date.

I thought i was ok with my son being circumcised but now he’s here I’m actually not. It’s been brought up again today and it’s not helping that my husbands pushy family keep asking about when it’s happening. I’m really not ready for this. We’re already having issues with his family calling my son by a different name because they don’t like the name we’ve chosen as it’s not an Arabic name!

I’ve told my husband I’m not ready yet and he accepts this, I can tell it bothers him.

Am I being unreasonable about this? Obviously I know what I married into, but as his mother and he’s here, it now doesn’t feel right to put him through a procedure that’s totally unnecessary as he’s not a medical issue.

Adult men are able to have much stronger painkillers.

Adult men are also continent. Immobile babies defecate and urinate in their nappies, and their soft stools are liable to spread everywhere. Their bowel movements flow, including around the front of the crotch and up the baby's back. Hardly optimal for minimising infection risk in that wound, is it?

‘A lot of doctors’ as in doctors who are from communities where mutilating baby boys is normal? Unless there’s a medical condition that’s affecting the fore skin, parents should not be able to circumcise baby boys in the UK. (Read your post wrong but it sounded like you were pro circumcision).

Same here…but I would never, ever have agreed to it in the first place.

Yes we’ve moved on in the last 80 years…

Fair point re US although I always assumed this was because of the large Jewish population but happy to be told otherwise

I think it is a human rights issue and it should be outlawed unless for medical reasons.

I presume you would also advocate for the removal of the breasts of all girls/young women as soon as they have finished developing? After all, breast cancer is a horrendous killer, and we have ready availability of formula milk for feeding babies, so the benefits obviously outweigh the risks, eh?

Sigh......

The OP is getting only one point of view on this thread when I believe that with her marriage it is far more nuanced.

US medical guidance, via google, is

"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks, but the benefits aren't significant enough to recommend it for all boys, leaving the decision to parents based on medical, cultural, religious, or personal factors, with the AAP supporting informed choice and emphasizing pain management during the procedure. Key benefits include reduced risk of urinary tract infections (UTIs), sexually transmitted infections (STIs) like HIV, and penile cancer, while risks are generally minor (bleeding, infection) and minimized when performed by trained professionals.

She should make her choice based on her personal circumstances. I don't believe it is as cut and dried, pun intended, as the responses to this thread suggest.

😂

No, indeed, I'm most definitely not pro circumcision, unless genuinely medically necessary; just the same as I'm not not in favour of surgeons cutting people open and transplanting a new liver in, when the patient's own liver was already perfectly healthy.

The latter would quite naturally be seen as utterly absurd and needlessly dangerous by everybody; yet the former seems to come with an enormous blind spot amongst a great many people.

When I say 'a lot of doctors', it clearly isn't the vast majority; but there obviously are enough out there who are willing to perform wholly unnecessary and potentially dangerous surgery on a newborn for money, so it stands to reason that they will seek to 'justify' what they're doing - no more than any other profession will have its elements who prioritise their income over ethics.

I've seen enough posts on MN about this topic to know that there are more than a few doctors out there - quite possibly those who are from pro-circumcision traditions - who frighten parents of baby boys into believing that they have a medical problem with their perfectly normal body parts and so 'need' a circumcision - maybe because their own personal beliefs are that it is somehow 'better' and so they think their ends justify their deceitful means, or even their personal beliefs blind them to medical reality?

You only have to look at the medical professionals (and other adults in positions of authority) now who will willingly cut healthy breasts and genitals off people with a personal psychological conviction that they shouldn't be there and are 'wrong'.

Even now, the NHS is preparing to do an extensive 'study' into whether puberty blockers can cause harm by giving them to vulnerable children. Doubtless there are some children who suffer from precocious puberty and thus genuinely need the blockers for a while; but it's very plain that the vast majority of cases involve those who want to stop their own normal puberty because they psychologically reject it. The blockers are meant to delay inappropriately early puberty; not to just prevent a person from going through a 100% normal stage of life.

Maybe gas companies will soon also do their own studies as to whether it causes any harm at all if you pump gas loose into homes without bothering to contain it carefully in sealed and regulated pipes? Anybody fancy volunteering their homes for the trials?!

"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states that the health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks, but the benefits aren't significant enough to recommend it for all boys..."

So how do the doctors and parents magically know which boys will 'benefit' when they've only just been born? It sounds very much to me that they will promote these dubious 'benefits' to parents who want them - and of course who will pay them for performing the procedure - but don't have the courage of their convictions to seek to convince parents who see it for what it really is, even admitting that there's no real difference.

They remind me of the weaselly salespeople in shops who will watch what you look at or pick up (with the intention of buying) and tell you that you've made an excellent choice as that is the best one - except they will say it regardless of what you choose, because their only interest is in the sale and the money.

You could just as easily declare that getting plenty of vitamins is clearly beneficial to your health, so that must mean that taking somebody into a locked room without their consent and putting them on a vitamin drip will be a worthy, kind thing to do. In fact, why not go further and advocate for cutting all boys' and men's penises off completely - as this will clearly and provably reduce their lifelong risk of penile cancer to zero?

Tell your husbands family to stop being so interested in your sons genitals and whether or not he should be mutilated.

FGM is illegal and so should circumcision without medical need. So so unnecessary.

also why does DH and his family feel that their beliefs trump your beliefs? The compromise would be to wait until DS can consent and can make his own informed choice.

Probably going to get flamed for my opinion but here goes

I am also in same boat (non religious married to a Muslim man)

We did get our son circumcised at about 2 months old (when they are old enough to have calpol after, cant remember exact age)
The procedure itself was fine, he had an local ansethetic and it was like a plastic ring and eventually the skin "dropped off" after a few days. He recovered absolutely fine and wasn't upset after.

I was in the same boat as you and had agreed prior to having children and wanted to back track once he was actually here.

The reasons I didn't (don't come at me for this please!!)
We had always had an understanding that as a mixed faith marriage there was always going to be compromise. For example my son doesn't eat halal food as this for me was a big one. I don't feed him pork but I want him to eat what I eat, eat Christmas dinner at my Christian family house etc. If my husband had backtracked on that I would be annoyed as this was something we discussed prior to conceiving along with the circumcision

The reason I did allow it to be done; My husband is Pakistani and is circumcised himself and for him it is a big part of i guess his culture? As he's not particularly religious. He is happy he is done , personally rightly or wrongly believes it's cleaner and is happy to have that connection I guess to his roots.
I did sit and have a really good think-
My son has brown skin and it is highly likely that all his peers in the Asian community will have had this done. My husband said he would have personally felt weird had he been the one "left out". I know boys probably dont talk about their willies all the time but I'm sure there will be a stage of awareness at some point down the road. How will he feel? Will he resent me for not allowing him that connection to his Pakistani side? Or will he resent me for not stopping it? Time will tell and it does play on my mind

In a mixed race or mixed faith marriage it's very hard to get everything "right".
My son is just as much Asian as he is white and maybe he will be of the same opinion as my husband and be pleased to be done. My husband said he would have resented anyone blocking it for him but maybe obviously he's saying that from a perspective of he's already had it done so it's easier to reconcile.

It's also hard when something is very important to a family ie his in-laws or the husband and we just cannot get our heads around it. For me I personally don't agree but for his side it is very important. It's not as easy as just backtracking without some sort of fall out and maybe the OP can't mentally deal with that at 5 weeks pp

It's a really difficult one and I hope you make the right call for your family x

Utterly barbaric, unless for medical reasons.

I hate that term “we” we’re pregnant, only the woman is pregnant the man doesn’t carry a baby and yes get him circumcised I’m not even religious and would do this

For what reason would you possibly need to cut off a piece of your child’s genitals? You are absolutely barbaric and should absolutely be ashamed of yourself.

YANBU. You should never cut pieces of a non-consenting child's body off them unless it's medically necessary.

Not to mention, if something goes wrong...well, it doesn't bear thinking about. Why risk that unnecessarily?? You should tell your husband that if your son wants to be circumcised for religious reasons as an older teen then you'll support it, but it should be his free choice when he's old enough to choose.

Why? Does the forced mutilation of children appeal to you?

TLDR: I mutilated my child's genitals so he could have turkey at Christmas.

This. Shoving their beliefs and culture onto you and your baby. It's unnecessary but then so are many religious customs.

Its not remotely difficult

You dont chop of bits of your baby boy. There is no justification for it

YANBU. It's barbaric.

I'm a bit baffled as to all the protestations of tradition and culture and the boy supposedly being ashamed and embarrassed for not having had the same unnecessary medical procedure done to him as is 'traditionally' done.

Who sees it? How does it come up in conversation? Do families and acquaintances sit down together for a meal and then one of them turns to another and says "Anyway, enough chat about this terrible weather, work and our respective holiday plans; let's talk about your penis..."

Even in changing rooms, it's still massively weird for other people to be deliberately focusing their gaze on somebody else's genitals, isn't it? And thinking it appropriate to make comments about them if they notice something that doesn't accord with their own preference/situation? To be honest, I find that seriously creepy and red-flaggy if somebody is doing that - and I would venture that they are the one who is obviously well out of order for being obsessed about it, not you for having a body that is slightly different from theirs.

It's hard to believe that ethical slaughter is a hard line for you but mutilation of a newborn is an acceptable compromise.

I think we should popularize the term MGM (Male Genital Mutilation). I'm not trying to suggest that it's anywhere near as horrendous as FGM, but it is on the same spectrum.

Thanks everyone for your opinions, it has been helpful to have both perspectives. I will make my own decision but good to know I’m not being unreasonable according to the majority. It makes a lot of sense.

i spoke to my husband last night sensitively about it and said i just cannot commit to doing this to my son for a non-medical reason.
Of course he’s not happy, said he is not compromising on this - I said we’ll go ahead and try because I won’t be signing a consent form.
he then said we’re going to come up against differences for our son because of a mixed marriage and need to make a compromise - which I said yes in this case our son can make his own decision once he is old enough. That’s the compromise.

He then said let’s leave it a couple of months and revisit. I said you can do that, but I won’t change my mind so it’s your choice to be disappointed by the same conversation in two months and the answer be the same. I think he thinks this is impacted by my mental health but it’s really not ..

Good for you, OP. It’s your son’s penis, so it should be his decision whether he wants skin cut off of the end.