Why Do You Circumcise YOUR Children?

on parenting discussion boards ad nauseum and it is interesting to see how heated the cirumcision debates can get....mainly heated by mothers who DO plan to or have cirumcised their sons. i've yet to read a father's perspective on this...so your post was interesting.

i think in the US the general consensus for circumcision is coming down to if the father has been cut or not. parents dont want their sons to look any different than their father for reasons of confusion, etc. at least, this is what i have gathered from the afore mentioned discussion groups. my son is uncut as is my husband. although had my husband been circumcised i would have preferred my son not to be. i just dont see any need for it.

even though i was born & raised in the states i never gave curcumcision a thought as my heritage is hispanic and european which means none of the males in my family were circumcised. (let me clarify...it is not like we all sat around at family functions talking about his but when a new baby boy was born into the family the discussion would arise as when i was a kid circumcision was still very de rigeour here in the states and even the pediatricians were shocked at the fact that these baby boys were going to be left whole).

i have known since i can remember that circumcision is mainly and historically has been a religious thing. the fear that is pumped into us in america about sexual dysfunction, infection, disease, etc if you dont get cut is asinine. if these issues were truly so great then every boy and man in europe, latin america and asia would be circumcised yet that is not the case. in countries like italy that are predominantly catholic, circumcision isnt even brought up as an option by pediatricians.

the tide does seem to be changing here in the states though. my friend just had a baby boy and her insurance would not cover circumcision stating that it is a cosmetic procedure.

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it's late and i'm tired. i just realized my spelling was atrocious in that last post....lol. i have two young kids one of which is teething madly....tired is probably an understatement...

Airing my dirty laundry at: Peacocks on Leashes

it was the circumcision of the last that made me realize I was "Just Doing it," without knowing why. I don't want to be like that. I am all Euroupean , so I don't understand why my mother had me circumcised, consequently circumcising my boys. As a boy, I never realized my penis was different than anyone else's. I wonder if this explains the "megastima," (I made that up,) around naked ness in our society. Later in life when pornography came in to play, it seemed all peni, (plural for penis,) were cut, although I still didn't realize that was not the way nature makes us. So they cut me before I could choose and hid the truth from me for as long as possible.

Why do people care about the penis so much? A milinea in the making, and we know better?

"God Commanded Abraham to cut himself..." - seriously? People believe a god would issue such a command? I wonder how many people died from this back before we understood infection?

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My son is not circumcised. His father is. And my son has not freaked out over the difference yet. If it upsets him in the future, I will explain why I made my decision, and I will pay for him to have it done after some discussion.

And though it is slightly off topic, this is also why I refused to have my daughter's ears pierced as a baby. Many people do it, but that's not the way she came to me, and if she wants it done later, she's more than welcome to do so.

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And I decided that circumsion was right for my son. It was important to me to feel like having the procedure was the right thing to do for us before I had it done. I think that's key - making the decision for yourself.

And I agree about the ears thing, IntricateGirl. Somehow to me that's different than circumscising, but I can see how they could be related. I guess the biggest difference between the two is that circumcision done later in life is a much more difficult procedure than if it is done as a baby. Plus there are medical reasons that men may have to be circumcised later in life (I had a relative who had to have that done and it was a huge deal). Ear piercing is ear piercing whenever you do it and there will never be a need to have it done. So my daughter will have to wait and make her own choice :)

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Brenna
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No worries, Brenna. Everyone's got to decide what works for themselves and their family. I didn't feel comfortable with it, so we didn't do it. I did a lot of research too, and I know that it's harder when he gets older. Hopefully, that will make him decide whether he REALLY wants it done, or whether he's just going through a phase of wanting it done to fit in.

I see your point about the ear piercing too. But in *most* circumstances, there isn't a need for a male to have a circumcision either. Either way, I felt better about letting them make that decision for themselves after some discussion on the matter. And if he should be one of the rare few that NEEDS a circumcision done rather than wanting it done, then of course, there won't be any question over it.

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