"Deciding Whether or Not to Circumcise Your Baby Boy"

Ask Dr. Sears

Circumcision is a decision that many parents face. There are many misconceptions and out-of-date information that parents may read. Here is a summary of the pertinent issues that you should consider when making this decision.

1. Medical benefits — THERE ARE NONE! Do not circumcise your baby because you think there are some medical benefits. A recent review by the American Academy of Pediatrics looked at all the data from the past decades to see if there truly were any medical benefits. Their conclusion — NO. There are no significant medical benefits that make circumcision worth doing. Here are a few benefits that we used to think were true, and now know are not.

2. Religious reasons — some people choose to circumcise for religious or cultural reasons. This is a personal decision.

3. Don't want to be teased — while this may have been true in the U.S. decades ago, the truth is that your uncircumcised kids will be in good company in the locker room when they are teenagers. Less and less people in the U.S. are now circumcising their boys.

4. Too much trouble to take care of — some people think that an intact penis is too much trouble to pull back and clean, especially during childhood. Well, the truth is, you are not even supposed to pull back the foreskin until it naturally comes back on its own between age 3 years and adolescence. So there really isn't anything to even take care of until then.

5. Want your boy to look like dad — the main difference that your child will notice between him and dad is the hair. He won't even notice any difference in the penis until he is old enough that you can then explain the difference to him.

So, what are the reasons TO circumcise?
Here is the list:
Religious reasons — as discussed above.
That is all. There really is no good reason to circumcise other that personal preference and religious reasons. ...read the full article

Circumcision is a decision that many parents face. There are many misconceptions and out-of-date information that parents may read. Here is a summary of the pertinent issues that you should consider when making this decision.

1. Medical benefits — THERE ARE NONE! Do not circumcise your baby because you think there are some medical benefits. A recent review by the American Academy of Pediatrics looked at all the data from the past decades to see if there truly were any medical benefits. Their conclusion — NO. There are no significant medical benefits that make circumcision worth doing. Here are a few benefits that we used to think were true, and now know are not.

2. Religious reasons — some people choose to circumcise for religious or cultural reasons. This is a personal decision.

3. Don't want to be teased — while this may have been true in the U.S. decades ago, the truth is that your uncircumcised kids will be in good company in the locker room when they are teenagers. Less and less people in the U.S. are now circumcising their boys.

4. Too much trouble to take care of — some people think that an intact penis is too much trouble to pull back and clean, especially during childhood. Well, the truth is, you are not even supposed to pull back the foreskin until it naturally comes back on its own between age 3 years and adolescence. So there really isn't anything to even take care of until then.

5. Want your boy to look like dad — the main difference that your child will notice between him and dad is the hair. He won't even notice any difference in the penis until he is old enough that you can then explain the difference to him.

So, what are the reasons TO circumcise?
Here is the list:
Religious reasons — as discussed above.
That is all. There really is no good reason to circumcise other that personal preference and religious reasons.

Are there any reasons NOT to circumcise? Consider these:

1. Leave nature alone — whether you believe God created men with a foreskin, or nature simply evolved this way, there must be some reason men have foreskins. Why change something that God/nature has created?

2. Sensation and sexual pleasure — the foreskin is filled with nerves, and is therefore extremely sensitive to touch. This enhances sexual pleasure.

3. Protects the glans (head) of the penis — the glans is another highly sensitive area. The foreskin protects the glans from constant rubbing and chaffing against clothing that can desensitize it over the years. This preserves sexual pleasure.

4. Ethical issues — there are groups of people worldwide, including medical societies, that oppose routine circumcision because they feel it is unethical for a parent to decide to alter the penis of their child without the child's consent. Parents who are deciding whether or not to circumcise their son may wish to consider the impact this may have in the future if the child decides they wish they were not circumcised.

So, when making this decision, the first thing to ask yourself is this — "Do I have any good reason to circumcise my baby?" If your answer is for religious reasons, then follow your faith. If not, and you can't think of any other significant reason other than just "because", then consider the above information as you make your decision.

Gimme Some Skin

Try this exercise: Find a 3x5 index card. One side, 15 square inches, equals the average surface area of a man's foreskin — about half of the total surface area of his penis.

Now fold the card in half lengthwise and bring the two short ends together to form a cylinder. The outside of the cylinder represents the external foreskin, a more sensitized, retractable extension of the skin on the penile shaft. The inside represents the delicate, lubricating mucosal lining that sheathes the glans, or head, of the penis.

These outside and inside folds are comparable to the external and internal aspects of the foreskin's closest anatomical analog, the eyelid. And, like the eyelid, the foreskin bristles with nerve endings: about 36% of the total penile allotment.

With this simple overview, you probably already know more about the foreskin than your doctor does. What most American health professionals are taught about it is even more succinct: It's the part of the male anatomy removed in a circumcision.

Despite its highly articulated, specialized physiology, the foreskin is commonly considered as disposable as the paper version you've just created. Every year the foreskins of an estimated 1 million U.S. infants end up in the trash.

Click the following link for the complete article:

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/07/12/gimme-some-skin