The Circumcision Discussion

Specialties Ob/Gyn

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I know this can be a HUGE debate, and I'm not looking to start any arguments. I was just wondering as you are OB nurses. I'm expecting a boy in July and not sure if we should circ. or not. My husband says yes, it's better medically in the long run. My gpa who just turned 70 had to have a circ. due to endless complications lately.

As nurses in this area, is the medication that they use good? And what are some questions to ask my Dr. about it. I already know that my hospital i'll be at uses a med. when they perform it, I"m just wondering what you all think.

Thanks

Jen :)

Talk it through with her. What are her reasons? Like I said, it really is a crap shoot when you have two people with strong opinions on different sides of the argument. I cannot really comment. Never wanted Kids and cannot even if I wanted. So, something I will never have to discuss with my wife.

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Specializes in Psych, Med/Surg, LTC.
Where I'm from if a guy made ANY comment about another guy's member it was grounds for a butt kicking. Not necessarily from the guy who was the subject of the comment, but any redneck who decided that another kid was "queer" because he noticed another guys "junk" just had to be a "queer." Where I grew up in the late 60's and early 70's, gays definitely stayed in the closet. Nobody would dare be caught looking, much less commenting. There were some guys who were uncut, but nobody said a word. :sofahider Conservative Democrat South, gotta love it.

Haven't I posted about this before?

With adoption being my only chance at having a child now, I am still on the fence about circumcision. The wife is in favor if it, insistent really. Maybe I should require she be circ'd and then she will be qualified to decide. :idea:

Why not let the child decide when they are older? It is their member after all. I think it would hurt just the same regardless of age.

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Why not let the child decide when they are older? It is their member after all. I think it would hurt just the same regardless of age.

I guess it has a lot to do with religious beliefs that seem to require infant circumcision. I have not studied that particular scripture in detail or discussed it with my pastor. If I swung in favor of circumcision, it would be for that reason. Any other reason just doesn't hold up.

I am circ'd, I have no memory of it and no emotional damage as a result. Maybe if the doc had botched the job I might feel different. If I wasn't circ'd, I'd sure as heck NOT opt for it as an adult.

Overall, I am in favor of letting the child decide to make decisions about his own body. But as an infant, he won't have the capacity to make those kinds of decisions for quite some time. So, I only hope that he agrees that the decision we make for him was done in his best interests. I had no say in getting circ'd, and I don't hold it against my parents. They did what they felt was best and I am OK with that. It wasn't the only decision they made for me in my youth.

Gila, my wife is in favor of it for the sake of appearance. That seems to be the only reason she has. I have told her that she won't be seeing his member much past the age of 6 or so, so she shouldn't worry about it. Doesn't seem to fly.

Who knows, we may end up with a girl and all this will be a moot point. :cool:

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Specializes in Psych, Med/Surg, LTC.

Religious reasons is a whole different story. I understand that is more of a "must do" kind of thing. I just mean those that aren't Jewish/Muslim/other religions that require it. I know many people who do circ, and its not for religious reasons.

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Specializes in Med-Surg so far.
Why not let the child decide when they are older? It is their member after all. I think it would hurt just the same regardless of age.

Actually when they are older, better pain management is available to them. An adult could be put under general and then on a post-op morphine pump. Can't do that with a baby.

I am really against circumcision but I've come to realize you can't argue with people who have made up their mind to do it. The only thing to do is put the information out there and let people draw their own conclusions. Misinformation really burns me up though.

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Specializes in Psych, Med/Surg, LTC.
Actually when they are older, better pain management is available to them. An adult could be put under general and then on a post-op morphine pump. Can't do that with a baby.

I am really against circumcision but I've come to realize you can't argue with people who have made up their mind to do it. The only thing to do is put the information out there and let people draw their own conclusions. Misinformation really burns me up though.

ITA. You can't argue if someones mind is already made up. I also hate the misinformation used.

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Actually when they are older, better pain management is available to them. An adult could be put under general and then on a post-op morphine pump. Can't do that with a baby.

I am really against circumcision but I've come to realize you can't argue with people who have made up their mind to do it. The only thing to do is put the information out there and let people draw their own conclusions. Misinformation really burns me up though.

I am not sure about that. As an adult, you would have memories of the pain and discomfort for the rest of your life. However, I do not remember my infancy, so no bad memories of pain and discomfort.

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I am not sure about that. As an adult, you would have memories of the pain and discomfort for the rest of your life. However, I do not remember my infancy, so no bad memories of pain and discomfort.

Memories of pain fade. How many injuries does the average person have? I have memories of the idea of the pain. You can't remember the actual pain. That only happens with traumatic injuries where you can't forget. With a circumcision I imagine the only thing you would actually remember is the idea of the freakiness of having someone cut on your member. I seriously doubt they would do it without pain meds and there are worse things than getting skin cut off.

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I think the real point is that it is just plain unethical to cut off someone's body parts when they themselves cannot consent. If people want to get extreme body modifications when they are an adult, that is no one elses business. They should just be given the choice. The pain control discussions are a moot point. The point is that it is unethical to take away parts of someone's body when they cannot give consent. An interesting thought experiment- If circumcisions were never practiced and were not considered normal, what would the punishment be for someone who decided to do that to an infant?

Interestingly, not all Jewish people still practice this, see http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/ their logic is quite fascinating.

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Gila, my wife is in favor of it for the sake of appearance. That seems to be the only reason she has. I have told her that she won't be seeing his member much past the age of 6 or so, so she shouldn't worry about it. Doesn't seem to fly.

I have to admit that this really gets to me. Changing your child's hair is one thing, cutting off a body part is another thing entirely. Do you come out of the L&D suite and say "Its a boy! 10 fingers, 10 toes! He is just perfect! Except for that foreskin, I don't like the looks of that so we are going to cut it off." I know a lot of parents don't like the appearance because it doesn't "look like daddy"...

1) The kid doesn't and won't care, him and his father aren't twins, they don't look the same anyway.

2) If your son's member looks like his fathers member there is something wrong with one of the two. By the time the two are even beginning to approximate a resemblance, you have no business looking at your son's member anyway.

Just my two cents

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Specializes in Telemetry, Nursery, Post-Partum.
I have to admit that this really gets to me. Changing your child's hair is one thing, cutting off a body part is another thing entirely. Do you come out of the L&D suite and say "Its a boy! 10 fingers, 10 toes! He is just perfect! Except for that foreskin, I don't like the looks of that so we are going to cut it off." I know a lot of parents don't like the appearance because it doesn't "look like daddy"...

1) The kid doesn't and won't care, him and his father aren't twins, they don't look the same anyway.

2) If your son's member looks like his fathers member there is something wrong with one of the two. By the time the two are even beginning to approximate a resemblance, you have no business looking at your son's member anyway.

Just my two cents

I agree...seriously, I'm not male, so I can't say for sure, but how many little boys compare their member to their father's? I can't imagine it really happens that much...or if it did, the father couldn't just say well, we look different because we are different people...or we look different in this other way too...doesn't seem that hard to do to me.

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I am not sure about that. As an adult, you would have memories of the pain and discomfort for the rest of your life. However, I do not remember my infancy, so no bad memories of pain and discomfort.

I do not agree with this...

LOL how many women go thru natural childbirth to only do it again numerous times. I have no recollection of the actual pain I went thru. I can say to myself Yup it hurt... but I don't remember what it actually felt like. Same with all 3 knee surgeries I've had. Yup it hurt do I rememebr waht it felt like? nope... am I traumatized... nope.

My son was going to be circ'd but wasn't because the we a) wanted to leave hospital early lol ped was supposed to be there more than 12 hours earlier (long story).... and b) my ped made some really stupid remark about why people choose to circ so I decided not to.

The AAP states circ's can prevent certain types of penile cancer in the future and for some reason performing cosmetic surgery on an infant is justified for this reason. Yet you never see a ped performing mastectomies on infant girls because they might get breast cancer one day....

To each their own.. but the reasonings to circ aren't sound enough for me. LOL altho we had intentionally planned on getting DS circ'd (my husbands decision)

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