Thoughts on "looking like dad" - Page 2

[DJay]

Originally Posted by dinahx

I agree. The argument is bizarre for 2 reasons:

1) a baby penis never looks like an adult penis ever.

2) if the dad is THAT committed to genital similarity, he is always able to restore!

THIS son is committed to genital integrity. I restored my foreskin to look like dad.

[jenP]

Originally Posted by Ann-Marita

It really has nothing to do with looks. It has way more to do with the dad's inability to face that something important was taken from him while he was a defenseless baby.

Exactly. Not about looks at all, and I don't think there are any parents who expect father and son to compare genitals, ever. Also, the "trauma from not matching" is not expected for the son, it is the cut father who is traumatized if his son is not cut. The cut father feels compelled to cut his son in order to validate his own circumcision. If he sees his intact son grow up with no infections, no teasing in the locker room, no rejection from girlfriends, no emergency circumcision as an adult... then Dad sees that his own circumcision was for naught.

Jen

[Fyrestorm]

This argument is the most ridiculous of all of them!

This was not an issue when cutting started in this country. What about all the biys that were chopped up and their fathers were intact...like my DH? No one cared that he wouldn't look like his dad...he didn't even know he didn't until I was pregnant with DD and the discussion came up with MIL.

DH and his father also had different color hair...DH is taller than his father...their eye color is different and his father was bald...what should have been done about those differences? Who should have had the cosmetic surgery then?

[jenP]

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm

This argument is the most ridiculous of all of them!

This was not an issue when cutting started in this country. What about all the boys that were chopped up and their fathers were intact...like my DH? No one cared that he wouldn't look like his dad...he didn't even know he didn't until I was pregnant with DD and the discussion came up with MIL.

It wasn't an issue when cutting started because it was perceived as the latest medical advance, like vaccines and X-rays and formula. Parents felt like they were doing their children a favor by giving them the benefits of science. It was the American Dream after all, give the kids a better chance at life than you had.
Uncut fathers weren't raped and mutilated at the most vulnerable time in their life, therefore they had no deep-seated psychological need to repeat the trauma on the next generation in order to make themselves feel validated. That's why the "matching" argument didn't come up until we had a generation that was cut.

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm

DH and his father also had different color hair...DH is taller than his father...their eye color is different and his father was bald...what should have been done about those differences? Who should have had the cosmetic surgery then?

It is not about looks. Bringing up other ways that fathers and sons do not look alike only diverts attention from the real issue.

Jen

[ProtoLawyer]

My husband has significant facial scarring and a triangle of glass in his left eye, left over from a horrible car accident.

Needless to say, if this is a little boy I'm carrying, we're not going to try to make him look like Daddy, and his face is an area people can actually *see*. Why would we try to make him look like Daddy in an area that nobody outside the house would even notice?

[beckyand3littlemonsters]

I think the whole looking like daddy is just an excuse to justify inflicting pain on a helpless infant (sorry if i offend) and not a good excuse at that i mean ok if someone truely believes that it has health benefits (which i don't) but for a cosmetic reason, and to "look" like someone else is imo a cosmetic reason. probebly going way ott here but what else should be removed to make baby "look" like daddy, if daddy is in accident and looses a limb, should his son then have the same limb removed to "look" the same? :

[laughingfox]

When the topic came up during my last pregnancy, MIL said she had DH circed "so he'd look like his dad".
I laughed later (I didn't laugh in her face since I was nervous and new to the family) because they look nothing alike. They are about 6" different in height, have completely different builds, hair color, skin tone, style of dress, etc. You would never guess in a thousand years that they're related at all.
DH laughed because he had absolutely no idea what his dad's penis looks like, nor does he care in the slightest.

[proudmomof4]

Originally Posted by laughingfox

DH laughed because he had absolutely no idea what his dad's penis looks like, nor does he care in the slightest.

That makes total sense!

I agree with one of the PPs that it's not about the son but the father being traumatized. You can see this happen on a similar level with breastfeeding - young mothers who breastfeed while their own mother(-in-law) did not are "questioning" the parental choices of the generation before them (or so it is perceived). I'm convinced that a lot of the tensions we see between the mothers of different generations have their roots there.
Back to circumcision, this would mean that the father might be envious of his son's "better equipment"?

[DesireeH]

My intact 7 year old did ask me the other day about noticing a "difference." (My DH is circ'd.)

I showed him a video of what it was (he's very mature for his age and we are very open about things.) He said "that is really disgusting, what is wrong with people? That happened to papa? Poor papa." He also asked why they let that happen and I dont want him to have any ill feelings towards the grandparents so I just told him information wasnt as available then as it is now so a lot of people didnt know better. Then he ran out to DH and said "I love you papa!"

[MommytoB]

I also believe that they just use the excuse of looking like dad in most times they 'fear' how can I handle a foreskin when the dad doesn't ? It's an illogical fear making it seem foreskin is much more difficult since they are circ'ed and been around circ'ed family members but how do you make them know it's not that difficult to take care of a kid with a foreskin.

I'm a single mom and I'm very different from my boy after all I'm a girl and I was still able to potty train him when I don't stand up to pee .

He sat on the potty then he decided he was going to stand up to use the potty .

[brant31]

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm

This argument is the most ridiculous of all of them!

This was not an issue when cutting started in this country. What about all the biys that were chopped up and their fathers were intact...like my DH? No one cared that he wouldn't look like his dad...he didn't even know he didn't until I was pregnant with DD and the discussion came up with MIL.

I wondered about that for years. If it didn't traumatize a whole generation going in one direction (actually, an unnatural direction), why on Earth should it cause psychological harm -- or even the slightest worry -- going the other, way. In other words, why is a parent-chosen penis style OK, but a nature-chosen penis style is not OK? Why would the latter cause angst in a boy? It doesn't. It's the father.

Maybe it's the cynic in me, but I've settled on the answer that it's quite OK with dads for their sons to have less than them, but too big a risk for sons to have more (i.e., an additional functional part) than them. Even if it's deep in the subconscious, the husband that insists on circumcision is thinking, "She wants the kid to have it better than me. Crap, if she thinks that's what's best, then by definition mine's "worse". OK, the line gets drawn at what I have. Nobody in this house gets more than what I have. The new defintion of "best" is what I've got."

Fortunately, this is a learned response and can be unlearned. Sometimes easily, sometimes not so easily. I love the reactions of children and teens when they learn what circumcision is -- no defensiveness, no rationalizing, no mincing words: they universally say it's wrong. It takes years to internalize that circumcision is OK... it's like that Rodgers & Hammerstein song in South Pacific, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught". Sometimes I think that's the perfect summation of how a whole nation comes to see circumcision as normal and foreskin as gross.