Pregnancy & Baby 

Advertisement

Circumcision

From 'You and your new Baby' by Christine and Peter Hill.

The foreskin (loose skin over the head of the penis) can be removed by someone who knows what they are doing. Babies have relatively large foreskins. If done for religious reasons, it may be cut off with a knife. For other reasons, a plastic clip is clamped on so that there's no blood supply to the foreskin, which then drops off after a few days. Bear in mind the following points:

• Routine circumcision was popular earlier in the century because it was thought to be ‘hygienic’ or to prevent cancer of the penis, but the national paediatric associations in Europe and America no longer hold this view and advise against it.
• Although some circumcised fathers worry that their sons will want a circumcised penis in order to look like them, logically this would best be left until the son is old enough to decide for himself.
• As far as we can tell, it hurts just as much when you are small as later on in life (it has been studied as a severe stress event in research on infant psychology). It may be even more distressing when you are a baby, as no one can explain to you what's happening or reassure you that the pain will stop.
• The tip of a circumcised penis is less sensitive in later life.
• It is a surgical operation which can go wrong (for a few babies each year in the UK)

If you have had your son circumcised already, so be it. There are no long-term emotional complications. Otherwise, you can guess that we are against male circumcision unless there's a specific medical reason for it and there hardly ever is in babies (a tiny number of older boys will need circumcision for recurrent infections beneath the foreskin).

RATE IT

Delicious     Digg     reddit     Facebook     StumbleUpon

  Get the latest iVillage news on your desktop    Sign up for more iVillage RSS feeds

© iVillage Limited 2000-2008. All rights reserved. | © iVillage inc. 1995-2008. All rights reserved.
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB