On Circumcision:
To snip or not to snip. Some controversy has arisen as to whether or not a parent should circumcise their child. It use to be that all parents circumcised their child because it was believed that it was a medical need. Now, however, research has shown that there is in fact no medical need to circumcise your child and less and less parents are opting to do it. It use to be that 90% or more of all baby’s were circumcised in the US, now, numbers have dropped to around 50%.
What is this nonsense about there being no medical need for circumcision? In fact, insurance companies (including Medicaid) no longer cover the procedure because it has been labeled as no longer medically necessary. Alone, saving your child from a lifetime of humiliation is mental medical need enough in my opinion, not to mention that circumcision has been proven to be more cleanly and to reduce the contraction of sexually transmitted diseases included HIV and AIDS. Where do they get off saying there is no medical need? Some have argued, how could you inflict so much pain and discomfort on your tiny infant for something unnecessary? I say, it’s better to do it now when the infant is able to quickly forget the pain, than to have the procedure done when the child is 15 and has to remember the pain of not only the procedure itself, but the emotional pain sustained by boyhood foreskin.
When Devin and I discussed whether or not to circumcise our child, the answer was obvious. Why would you want to expose your child to the inevitable names that come from fellow peers in the locker room, or cause your child that uncomfortable silence when his spouse for the first time realizes things just don’t look quite right. Worse yet, I dread trying to explain to my small son why his doesn’t look quite like dad’s. “Sorry son. It just wasn’t in the budget when you were born.”
This clearly is an opinion, and I don’t want to offend anyone. Some have likened circumcision to choosing to pierce your baby girl’s ears. It’s simply a cultural decision, and what you decide doesn’t matter either way.