With this edition of Circumcision: Parental Regret, I introduce the new Daily Kos group Parents Regretting Circumcision:
A place for parents to reflect on their past decision to circumcise their son(s), and why they would not make that choice again.
As the genital integrity rate of newborns has risen in recent decades, more parents are realizing that they would not have made the decision they did with the information they have now.
Below, two parents share their stories.
To Snip or Not To Snip? by JOANNALEE on April 1, 2011:
As all parents will admit, we make a lot of mistakes. I make them every day. One of the ones I regret the most happened when Josiah was a mere 11 days old. We paid a doctor to permanently amputate a perfect, functional, healthy part of his tiny little body.
Why? I really don't know. Cultural tradition, religion, preventative health... several bad excuses we could choose from.
The problem is, well, there are several problems.
First of all, it shouldn't have been our choice. There was nothing at all wrong with his foreskin. It was not medically necessary. No parent should have the right to subject their child's body to cosmetic alteration. He had no choice. Had he had the choice, I have no doubt what he would've chosen. [...]
Someday I will apologize to him and hopefully he will forgive me. In the meantime, I fully intend to try and inform people who are still under the impression that routine circumcision is the right thing to do, that it is by all means NOT.
frowniebrown86 says, on April 2, 2011:
direct link
I'm not making this video to make anyone feel like a bad parent...
It's not easy to admit that we made a mistake...
As far as, like, guilt and regret, those are just some feelings that we're going to have to deal with. You know, more than anything, it's not hard because we have to deal with them, it's hard for us because we know that our son is going to have to deal with the decision that we made for him. [...]
My son is the one that, you know, we owe the apology to and we're just going to have to sit down with him some day and be very candid and honest and hope that he finds it in his heart to forgive us. [...]
Ask yourselves as parents, you know, is this something we really have the right to remove without our child's consent? The answer that my husband and I eventually came up with was "No. There is no therapeutic benefit to having our son circumcised."