a little survey - circumcision?

[Sadie]

Without being biased or judgmental or anything else one reading this might assume... I was hoping to get an informal survey of people to post whether or not they circumcised their sons (without giving reasons for or against doing so). I am just curious! And, to be the first, I did not.

UPDATE - I was hoping for just some yes or no answers... I just checked this discussion after not reading it for a while. Seems to have gotten a little heated and/or weird. So, I am closing it. Thanks for the responses!

[Janette Girod]

No way, no how! I'm glad it's finally falling out of fashion in the US.

[KiwiInOz]

As much as I dislike RIC, I hesitate to agree that if's "falling out of fashion in the US." The most recent figures
are for 2004 or the like. 56% of boys born in USA maternity wards were cut before being released from the hospital. We honestly do not know how many boys are cut later in life on an outpatient basis. Part of the rise of
uncut in the USA simply results from the fact that the fraction of the USA that is Hispanic or nonMoslem south Asian is rising. Those groups don't believe in circ. RIC has definitely fallen out of fashion west of the continental divide. Also at least 25% of US birth are covered by Medicaid, and Medicaid in 16 states won't cover it. When Medicaid stops paying for RIC, the rate falls noticably.

I suspect that circ is down in highly educated families, and families committed to progressive political and sexual values. If I am right, there's a lot of intact boys in every college town in America. My nephews, born in the 1970s in Corvallis OR, tell of several intact classmates throughout school.

Yet I still fear that the standard upper middle class American boy, who grows up in a family with 2 cars, a dog,
2 baths, and 4 bedrooms, and who lives east of Denver Colorado, is a helmet head. His parents never saw a foreskin while growing up. His mother was never intimate with an intact man before her marriage. His parents simply prefer not to be reminded of certain anatomical facts every time they change a diaper or give a bath.

"Normal" is more than a biological reality; it's a social construct. And social constructs can derail, get twisted.
Sadly, this seems to have happened with the foreskin in the USA. It is fascinating to read how the UK and New Zealand quietly gave up RIC a generation ago, by simply having the government not fund it. Australia and Canada crossed that bridge in the 1980s. There's been a bit of fuss in Aus, none in Canada. The US now
stands alone, in having tens of millions of educated parents insisting that the male genitalia should differ from
what Mother Nature wants. I don't blame a twisted belief that Genesis 17 applies to the whole human race,
but AMerican squeamishness about elimination, and prudishness about the privates, and a surprising ignorance of how sexual pleasure really works.

[likethegum]

We didn't circumcise our son, and my parents didn't circumcise me (that was apparently uncommon in the U.S. in the mid-70s, much more uncommon than it is now).

There are reasons for circumcision, but aside from the irrefutable (religious) ones, there are the dubious ones (STD prevention) and the full-on fraudulent ones (the Victorian idea that circumcision would prevent masturbation later in life).

The concept of doing it for cosmetic reasons (e.g. "so it won't look gross/weird/etc") is appalling to me. I can't imagine that many parents would consider cosmetic surgery on a baby girl's parts...

[Chuck]

I was searching for some pictures of messy, sloppy, food faces of toddlers when I came across this site. I was intrigued by the question, only because I was not circumcised when I was born in 1958. The reason being was based on my medical condition when I was born. I was born with Methemoglobinemia also known as "blue baby syndrome". In 1958, it was related to high nitrate contamination in ground water resulting in decreased oxygen carrying capacity of hemoglobin in babies leading to death. By the grace of God and faith of my parents; I survived and lead a pretty healthy life.

Back to the circumcision; it isn't near as necessary to circumcise today as years ago, that is mainly because of religious beliefs and when I was growing, most all boys were circumcised. Thus was the problem. Me, not being circumcised, was embarrassed to play sports, go to phys. ed. classes, etc. I felt out of place, fortunately I grew out of that stage. The important thing I will tell you, most of you contemplating this decision have already found this out; hygiene is a very important factor here...

You can choose not to circumcise, but keep this in mind; psychologically, he will survive. However, unless he understands from day one the importance of keeping himself clean and pulling the foreskin back to urinate, he will likely carry a genital infectious disease of sort. Think about it, as a baby, mom and dad will do their part to keep him clean at all times, but when it becomes his duty; will he pull back the foreskin to urinate, will he wash his penis every time he bathes (in fact, as a teenager or adolescent male, will he bath every day)? This I cannot stress enough to you. I thank God, my mother did and I did as I was supposed to do. I know some people that didn't get circumcised and they have genital warts. I know some that have given their spouses bladder infections, simply because they didn't wash and keep it clean. Of course, it doesn't happen to all uncircumcised men, but the risk is there, regardless.

You could choose to circumcise the boy based solely on the fact that you did everything to reduce the risk factors of him having medical issues and/or causing his girlfriend (face the facts) or preferably a wife to have a genital condition or worse.

Moms and dads, as you discuss this issue, think about the aforementioned factors, not religion, not your personal preference, but what is best for your sons. If I was asked this question when I was born and able to answer it, I would have said circumcise me, I'll recover from the surgical process; physically and psychologically.

That’s my two-cents worth... glad I came across this site today, I always wanted to say this to someone for the sake of other boys that will bear this burden based on your decision.

[KiwiInOz]

Chuck, last century about 100 million American baby boys were circumcised within the first week of their lives.
A large majority of those boys are doing just fine. They have absolutely no memory of having been circumcised
as infants. Infant circumcision can be very painful and stressful, but not necessarily so. Some boys are
troubled to discover that they don't have all the pink bits Mother Nature intended, but a large majority of boys
don't regret not having something they have no memory of. No penis I saw while growing up looked hacked or mutilated. I was astounded to discover at age 13 that the penises of al the boys around me were unnatural. It's only thanks to Internet posts that I know that some men are very unhappy about being cut, and that some men have diminished sex lives because too much was cut off. The one unquestionably unethical aspect of American RIC is that they don't start by shooting you up with lidocaine. Circ hurts, but that's easy to head off. Because of what I write in this paragraph, there are passionate intactivists who flame me and make me feel completely unwelcome. So be it.

I began pulling back before every pee around age 9 or 10, simply to reduce my embarrassment. Nobody ever
told me that was a health requirement. Nearly all uncut boys pee through the skin before puberty. You don't
have to see their pink bits to know this, just notice the thicker stream. Millions of boys around the world don't
pull back before adolescence or manhood, and there's no urological disaster. In my 40s, I decided to stop being ashamed of my foreskin in the john, and now pull back just enough to free the slit.

I was very scared of locker rooms until I discovered at 15 that if I slipped my hand into my shorts and pulled
back the skin right before pulling it down, I would pass for circumcised in the locker room and showers. Again,
it was not until my 40s that I could be comfortable in a group shower situation with my foreskin on display.

When human attitudes are ouf of sync with the human body, the moral high road is to change the attittudes,
not the body. More important areas where this principl should be applied is the Barbie doll body shape,
women who are ashamed of ample labia minora, and the passion younger women have for getting ride of their
pubic hair. Just as men come with foreskins, most women have curves in the abdomen and thighs, women
differ considerably in their pink bits, and pubic hair is part of the standard specs.

My mother did tell me to pull back in the bath, but I am confident I would have done that anyway, what with
all the scare talk about smegma in the sex ed materials of the 50s and 60s. (Very little was said in print about
circ in those days, except that it prevented smegma, and smegma was supposed to be god-awful!) I shower
every day, and every time I shower I pull back the skin. Trivial I spend a lot less time fussing with my tackle
than my wife does to clean her pink bits every day. After sex, we dry off our pink bits with Kleenex.

My better half acquired herpes more than a decade before meeting me. She has had chronic yeast and
bladder infections. She has never passed any of this on to me, despite my being uncut. She has never blamed
me for her issues, which have declined in frequency and severity over the course of our marriage.

Hundreds of millions of men in other countries with a high standard of medicine and daily showers are uncut,
and there's STD or urological disaster. Never retract by force, especially before puberty. When it retracts, wash
under it daily, this take 1-3 seconds. All boys with a sex life our grandparents would have condemned should
use condoms outside of marriage; this holds regardless of cut status.

Chuck, you are silent about the foreskin and sexual pleasure. The foreskin is very much a player in sexual activity, and is very rich in nerve endings, a fact medical science did not appreciate until around 1990. All boys
masturbate, but the uncut ones can do it more sensually and never need lube. This easier and better masturbation translates into better marital foreplay. The easiest and most effective foreplay is what a woman does to an uncut man with her fingers. An uncut BJ is fine if he washes under the foreskin beforehand. Two hunches: condoms break less often with uncut men, and uncut men have more feeling in middle and old age.
I suffer from retarded ejaculation, and fear that if I were cut, I would feel almost nothing. An old and dear friend
has confided as much to me about himself. He is cut and can no longer enjoy his wife.

We do not know yet whether the foreskin enhances a woman's pleasure. The problem here is that all sex
research is American, and middle aged American investigators are all cut, and hence blind to the possible
sexual role of the foreskin. There are American women who post in forums (raunchier than this one) that a college age affair with an uncut foreigner or Latino was a defining moment in their sexual history. Because of it, they became intactivists in their 30s and 40s. Sex workers who have told intactivists that they can tell the difference between cut and uncut in a moment, by feel alone, that uncuts are gentler and come more quickly. There are a handful of women who have concluded that their inability to enjoy vaginal stems from being married to a cut man. Everything I write in this paragraph is anecdote, though, not evidence. But a growing body of such anecdotes is having a growing influence on the younger unmarrieds, the sort of people who flock to YouTube, etc.

[Kimmy Coop]

We didn't circumcise.

Here's a tongue in cheek blog post I'd come across when trying to make my decision.

http://bestparentever.com/2008/07/10/45-circumcision/

[Dutchmom]

We did not. He is au natural.