We are considering circumcision........

[fustilarian]

For our 3 month old son who is half jewish, but the wrong half. My partner is circumcised and would like his son to be too, but is not adamant if I don't want to do it.

I see that it is a very heated topic on mumsnet.

I think that the procedure without anaesthetic is clearly barbaric and horrifying. With anaesthetic it carries risks too, but would you anti-circumcision lobby say it is barbaric done in this way? If so, why?

If it's not medically necessary it seems unreasonable to get part of your child's body sliced off before your child is old enough to decide whether he agrees.

If it becomes important to your son when he's old enough to make an informed decision about it then he can choose to have it done then.

I do not have a ds so it's theoretical for me.

I don't think it's so much about looking for reasons not to do it but about wondering what reasons one can have for doing it. I am not persuaded by any reasons I have heard in favour of male circumcision which settles it for me. If it ain't broke...

I'm with rasputin.

It is not medically necessary nor chosen as a cosmetic or religious procedure by the person involved.

For the same reason that I'm opposed to ear-piercing for babies. You are inflicting pain on a tiny baby (yes, even with an anaesthetic it will be very painful for him) and for cultural rather than medical reasons. He has no power to resist or even to express his own wishes. You will be doing this to satisfy your husband's wishes, which are in direct conflict with your baby's need - and right - to be protected from pain by his parents.

There is also some controversy over the extent to which circumcision affects the quality of sexual arousal in later life.

Exactly as onebatmother says.

For me circumcision for religious reasons on babies is equivalent to the christian ceremony of christening a baby

As a Christian I believe in adult baptism through profession of faith - so based on that I guess I believe in adult circumcision if the adult so wishes

It sounds excruciatingly painful and a risk of infection - I couldnt do it to my baby.

And impossible to reverse if a man decides as an adult that he would rather like his foreskin back - sorry to be blunt but its true!

On the choosing on my ds's behalf issue, my dp believes that by not having the op we could be excluding him from the jewish tradition.

On the having it done as an adult issue, my dp had it done when he was a little boy and found the post op pain really awful. He has spoken to various doctors who have said that it gets more painful as the penis matures. not sure how this is really measured.

All the jewish men in our families are happy and proud to have this symbolic marker of their ethnicity.

For us it's therefore a question of deciding whether to risk damaging his sense of identity as a male of jewish forebears or to potentially put him through a lot of pain. I would rather go down the first route (no circ) but I feel that as I am not a jewish man I can't fully identify with the more subtle issues.

I am erring towards putting my foot down against but I am still keen to find out the degree of pain/painlessness in an anaesthetised procedure. Obviously that horrible video on google is done without pain relief, but with a plastibell and local anaesthetic I would have thought it would be much less painful. But how much less I wonder??

I suggest you look on you tube to see a video of the procedure. I doubt you will go ahead.

So how much pain is tolerable?

I'm with the anti's, I'm married to a half Jewish (also wrong half) man and it would have been over my dead body I'm afraid - he is not practising so it did not come up.

Is your husband a regular visitor to your local Synagogue?

Ok - imagine you have a dd- could you imagine agreeing to the say the outer lips of her vagina cut off? Sorry to be brutal, but this talk of pain relief seems to be skirting the real issue.It is babaric pain relief or not.He can make the decision himself as an adult.

men in my family have often been circumcised for medical reasons and so the pain they suffered before warrented the operation. Your ds has no problem with his penis.It makes no sense.

Convert to the Jewish faith yourself and then he'll be fully Jewish and you won't have cut any part of him off.

Also, the 'pain is worse as the penis matures' sounds like crap to me. Nerve endings are nerve endings. What they mean is the younger you are, the less you will remember.

But (and please forgive me if I have got my facts wrong here) isn't there an issue here that, according to Jewish law, your son is not Jewish because you his mother are not Jewish? Surely, if anything excludes him from the Jewish tradition, it will be that?

Actually we don't know if it's actually more painful as the penis 'matures' - what we know is that older boys and men who can talk can articulate the need for pain relief.

A tiny baby cannot

I'm certain there is no scientific basis for the belief that pain increases as a child's body matures. If it hurt your husband as a five-year-old, it will hurt your baby as much.

choosing to have it done as an adult - when the pain can be rationalized - is quite a different matter. Why can this not be left till then?

A sense of identity - this is retrospective justification I think. If one were an ethicist and trying to weigh the relative harms of inflicting incomprehensible - and certain - pain on a sentient baby, and the possible damage inflicted by the far more nebulous deprivation of a sense of shared tradition - I don't think you'd struggle with that one.

And again - if your son as a schoolboy complains of feeling deprived, he can choose to have it done at that point.

According to my sons surgeon, the plastibell doesn't always do a proper job. I was going to pay privately for it for Ds as he was having problems with a tight foreskin. He had the full job done a month before his 8th birthday by the NHS surgeon. Ds was a bit sore afterwards, but even now at 11, he still thanks me for letting him have it done. His father was in his mid 30's when he had it done for the same reason, though he apparently had problems sexually too, and at least Ds wont have that particular problem when he's older.

Well, if the pain were less than or equivalent to a jab, then I would be inclined to let my dp decide and leave it to the men. If it were more than that then I would only proceed after very lengthy debate/thought.

The issue of being irreversibly de-foreskinned as an adult had not occured to me before, perhaps because all my male relatives are quite happy about it. It's a good point though.

On Jewish identity, it is complicated, but yes MadBad you are right, he would be excluded from the jewish tradition anyway. I can't fully explain or rationalise my dp's feelings about his religion/tradition. He just wants his son to be like him at the end of the day I think. And he is not at all religious, though being jewish is a big part of his life- again, complicated.

I think I am more or less convinced to go down the 'he can do it when he wants to' route. Good points made by all, thank you.

if he wants to

My son had a circumcision for medical reasons 11 days ago. He's 14 months old.

Unless there is a medical reason for it, I can't understand why anyone would want to subject their child to a general aneasthetic and surgical procedure. Even so much as a sniffle and he could pick up a serious chest infection from the GA (as my son did). The GA was scary and disorientating, and the pain near constant for 7 days. The penis has to go through a process of bleeding/ scabbing/ scab falling away/ scabbing again etc as it heals. Everytime he wees for the first few days he will scream. Everytime you change a nappy you will tear part of the scab away, and he will scream (no vaseline until the nurse does the wound check 6 days later).

This is an operation that had to be done for my son to have normal function, and I still felt eaten up with guilt.

He also had to have an operation at 5 weeks (for pyloric stenosis) and while it may be a comfort that they do forget quickly, they most definitely feel pain at the time, and you NEVER forget.

I'm going to be blunt. Your son is not Jewish, therefore to do the circ for religious reasons is not valid.

In order to be Jewish, your son would have to go through the entire conversion process, including circumcision, if he chooses to do so when he is older. My nephews both went through this because their mother is not Jewish (although they were circed when they were born).

My son is Jewish, as I am, although my DH is not. He has not been circumcised as my DH is very against the practice and as I am not a practising Jew, I had no problem not having him circed. I have taken flak from my entire family for this, BTW.

Thank you for asking fustilarian. WildSheepChase's story is worth re-imagining, putting yourself in her position but without the comfort of knowing it had to be done. Good luck.

Oh gosh, I know plenty of boys with a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother who are circumcised - including in my own family. If it makes your DH happier, go for it.

I am very strongly against any genital cutting of male/female babies unless for medical reasons. I find it barbaric and shocking that people do it to their sons these days.