I was discussing circumcision with a friend regarding circumcision. She is not of childbearing years, and she only had girls, so this is moot for her, but of course she stands in a position to influence her girls.
Her sister is a dr who just had a baby boy. Her sister was researching circ and she said the deciding factor was "new evidence showing increased rate of infection in older men who are intact."
I said "I don't think that the potential for infection 80 years in the future has any bearing on my newborn son's foreskin." A good counter, right?
My friend said "well you do lots of things with your son's future health in mind, you eat certain foods when pregnant, you breastfeed, you feed him certain foods as a child, you control his exposures to certain chemicals, etc. So of course you make decisions now based on your son's future health, that's your job as parent."
I then switched my argument to the fact that older women have many infections as well, but we don't choose to alter our newborn girls to prevent those.
The discussion kind of fizzled out then (she got a phone call, and we both had to get to work anyway), it didn't end in an uncomfortable or controversial way at all, but I just feel that it was left with the "score" too much in favor of circ. I will be seeing this friend in two weeks and will have time to debate in person any number of topics. I love debating with her, she's very much in a mentor position, someone I really respect, but she also really respects my unique perspective as a mother in my generation vs what it was like in her generation. So even though topics like circ and vaccines and breastfeeding dont' directly impact her, she still enjoys discussing them with me. And like I said, she does have girls that will likely have children eventually, so she is in a position to influence them.
Anyway...help me out with the argument that parents do things all the time that directly impact the future health of their children. While that is true, I think this is one health issue that truly can wait until they are older adults to make the decision. Although the counter to that is older men don't heal well or handle anesthesia well, so circ at that age is risky. Of course it's likely the way Western medicine cares for older intact men that contributes to the increase in infections (over cleaning perhaps). And still the argument that women suffer just as many infections is a valid one (does anyone have a link to that by the way? It seems logical to me, but I would like a link to support that argument)
Her sister is a dr who just had a baby boy. Her sister was researching circ and she said the deciding factor was "new evidence showing increased rate of infection in older men who are intact."
I said "I don't think that the potential for infection 80 years in the future has any bearing on my newborn son's foreskin." A good counter, right?
My friend said "well you do lots of things with your son's future health in mind, you eat certain foods when pregnant, you breastfeed, you feed him certain foods as a child, you control his exposures to certain chemicals, etc. So of course you make decisions now based on your son's future health, that's your job as parent."
I then switched my argument to the fact that older women have many infections as well, but we don't choose to alter our newborn girls to prevent those.
The discussion kind of fizzled out then (she got a phone call, and we both had to get to work anyway), it didn't end in an uncomfortable or controversial way at all, but I just feel that it was left with the "score" too much in favor of circ. I will be seeing this friend in two weeks and will have time to debate in person any number of topics. I love debating with her, she's very much in a mentor position, someone I really respect, but she also really respects my unique perspective as a mother in my generation vs what it was like in her generation. So even though topics like circ and vaccines and breastfeeding dont' directly impact her, she still enjoys discussing them with me. And like I said, she does have girls that will likely have children eventually, so she is in a position to influence them.
Anyway...help me out with the argument that parents do things all the time that directly impact the future health of their children. While that is true, I think this is one health issue that truly can wait until they are older adults to make the decision. Although the counter to that is older men don't heal well or handle anesthesia well, so circ at that age is risky. Of course it's likely the way Western medicine cares for older intact men that contributes to the increase in infections (over cleaning perhaps). And still the argument that women suffer just as many infections is a valid one (does anyone have a link to that by the way? It seems logical to me, but I would like a link to support that argument)
