Should Boys be Circumcised?

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There is abundant evidence that the non-therapeutic circumcision of children alters human behavior throughout life. Circumcised boys cry differently, have more trouble breastfeeding, a heightened alteration to pain at vaccination, and, after they become adults, many have a compulsion to reenact the trauma of circumcision on others. The behavioral changes of circumcision are the major reason this debate exists at Opposing Views. Such a debate does not exist in the non-English speaking nations where child circumcision is almost unknown.

Male circumcision is (1) a traumatic operation and (2) the loss of a functional body part. Persons who have lost body parts must grieve their loss of function. Failure to grieve the loss of the foreskin function results in a cohort of men who are in denial about their loss and who need to maintain their denial. Traumatized persons tend to reenact and repeat their trauma. The compulsion to repeat the trauma and the emotional need to deny the loss results in a large cohort of circumcised men who seek to perpetuate the practice of non-therapeutic circumcision. Such men become the ‘adamant fathers’ who insist on circumcising their sons despite medical evidence that the operation is injurious. Circumcised doctors tend to be biased in favor of circumcision. A baby is more likely to be circumcised if the father and/or attending physician is circumcised.

Australia currenly is experiencing a backlash against genital integrity. The Australian Paediatric Association recommended non-circumcision—genital integrity—in 1971; thereafter, the incidence of circumcision among Australia's newborn plummeted. At the present time, in regard to genital integrity status, Australia is, in effect, two nations, one of which has mostly circumcised men and the other that has mostly intact men. The dividing point is the year 1978, because the incidence of genital integrity among newborn boys rose above 50 percent in that year. The ever-increasing percentage of genitally intact younger men in the population is causing increasing anxiety and distress among some older circumcised males. There now is a peculiar phenomenon happening in Australia, where one sees middle-aged men from the circumcised generation trying to turn Australia's medical practice back to that which prevailed before 1971. This is, of course, an attempt to defend the culture-of-origin and is carried out for the emotional reasons described here, although, as Goldman reports, pseudo-scientific reasons are advanced.

The medical literature on circumcision is voluminous and contentious. Circumcised doctors create papers that overstate benefits and minimize harms and risks. When these doctors publish such claims, other doctors come forward to refute them. The result is an unending debate driven by the emotional compulsion of circumcised men. The best way to end the debate is to stop the emotional injury to men that results from medically-unnecessary non-therapeutic child circumcision. To stop behavior change, boys should not be circumcised.