For context, I’m circumcised and expecting a son and my wife and I are torn about the circ. We’re American so from a cultural standpoint circumcision is the default choice. Thing is, there’s no real benefit besides practicing a religion we don’t believe in, and I’m uncomfortable about cutting the tip of my son’s dick off.
On the other side, I’ve met a guy who was bullied in high school so bad for it he got a circ as an adult. Apparently crazy painful recovery. I’ve also talked to women who are generally grossed out by uncircumcised men. I don’t want to make him feel like something’s wrong with him his whole life because I was uncomfortable with the idea.
From a moral standpoint I’m against it, but from a social and cultural standpoint I feel like I should do it? It’s a crappy situation. If there’s any uncircumcised American men who want to talk about their penis I’m all ears.
Edit: I really appreciate everyone’s responses I never expected to hear from so many people. With the decision hinging on social and cultural norms it’s been really helpful to be able to take the temperature like this. I obviously need to talk to my wife, but given the overwhelming support of dick hats I don’t thing we’re going to do it. Thanks, lemmings!
Parents who perform unnecessary surgery on their children because society says they should are bad parents.
That might seem harsh, but it’s true. You have a responsibility to make the right choices for your kids, and “society” doesn’t get a vote.
I faced the same question, but found it to be a no-brainer. You don’t perform unnecessary surgery on a baby.
The reason it is performed in the US is to stop boys from masturbating.
Ignore any excuses for doing it that people have come up with since. That’s the only reason the US started doing it, and every other reason is just people trying to rationalize why they keep doing it.
The “reasons” people come up with to explain it now are based on extremely unlikely events. All the serious issues that come up are avoided with proper hygiene. Unless they still have a stupid masturbation hangup, it all comes down to this:
Parents feel icky about having to explain to their child how to wash their penis.
If you can’t handle that, I’ll tell you right now that you’re going to have a hell of a lot tougher conversations.
What I told them was to imagine they were wearing a hoodie in the shower. You’d need to pull the hood back before shampooing your hair. Same thing goes for the little head, but don’t use shampoo, that might burn.
Not circumcising my kids only caused me one problem:
My mom reacted like it was a direct personal attack on her, because I was circumcised. She saw it as me saying she was wrong. I found it difficult to convince her that I was not judging her. She didn’t have the same information available to her as I did. When I was born, she didn’t really have a choice.
That’s me you’re talking about. And yes. I agree 100%.
Letting them do an elective surgery on my healthy child was a parenting failure I deeply regret.
The other reality of being a parent is that regret comes with the job.
You try to do the best you can do, and you deal with your mistakes as best you can. None of us is perfect.
I was talking to a work colleague about how I was agonizing over mistakes I made. He said if I’m concerned about my mistakes, then I’m doing ok. He said his parents never thought they made any mistakes or they didn’t care if they did. His attitude was if you’re trying, you’re a good parent.
Of course, I didn’t stop agonizing over my mistakes. After all, what does he know? He had shitty parents!
That’s helpful to hear. Thank you for sharing it.
Haha. Yes.
Eh?? If your shampoo burns you shouldn’t be using it anywhere on your body.
And actually, I find non-soap-based products (e.g. shampoo) better for my bellend.
How does it stop boys from masturbating?
John Harvey Kellogg - Plain Facts for Old and Young
He got around. I keep hearing of things related to him and a lot of it’s not great. I’m skeptical of it working well but nice quote
I’m also skeptical the cultural reasons for circumcision have much to do stopping masturbation or Kellogg when I look at a map of where it’s practiced:
And surprised that map doesn’t line up with this one:
I guess it’s probably the abrahamic religions:
My bad
It’s primarily a Jewish and Muslim thing. Christianity doesn’t really require it.
True, and if you kind of remove the Muslim map from the circumcision map I think you’re roughly left with the US, Canada and Australia. I originally thought British colonies, but a lot of the commonwealth doesn’t circumcise much. It’s not even British colonies that are still christian, since the UK doesn’t seem to circumcise much.
Anyway, I wonder why it’s these non-Muslim countries. I don’t think the Kellogg-masturbation narrative would have had that strong a hold in Australia, but I’ve been wrong a lot before
Almost a perfect match, with the addition of the US.
Not quite:
https://mander.xyz/comment/22680300
And I’m not confident that their aren’t more that I’m missing in a quick scan
Horrifying.
It doesn’t
It doesn’t.