Moms Talk is a weekly feature on all Lehigh Valley Patches in which local parents, caregivers and other members of the community are invited to share opinions and advice on parenting topics.
This week’s Moms Talk question relates to circumcision.
Religious groups protested the ruling by a German court that said a boy must be old enough to consent in order to be circumcised, according to the Huffington Post.
“The Cologne court ruling said the four-year-old boy in the case was not old enough to consent to have part of his body removed permanently and his parents should have let him decide when he got older. It gave no minimum age for this,” the Huffington Post reported.
In short, here’s what we want to know:
What do you think of the German court ruling? Do you think the same type of ruling should be made here? If you are a parent of a boy child, how did you make your decision on circumcision? Have you ever regretted it?
Our Moms Council members include:
- Lisa Amey of Upper Milford Township is a stay-at-home mom to an 8-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. A past president of the MOMS Club of Emmaus and longtime member of MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers), Lisa is an Independent Consultant for Arbonne International.
- Lisa Drew of Emmaus is a certified nutritionist and personal trainer, wellness and fitness coach with more than 17 years of experience. She is the mother of a 13-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy.
- Jennifer Elston of Emmaus has almost two decades of professional experience in child development and counseling. She is currently a stay-at-home mom to two beautiful girls. Together with her husband, Chris, she owns Christopher Elston Photography.
- Jeanne Lombardo of Nazareth is the mother of a 10-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl. She’s new to the Lehigh Valley, having moved to Nazareth from Bergen County, NJ in January.
- Lisa Merk of Lower Macungie is a stay-at-home mother of four boys – a 12-year-old and 6-year-old triplets. Lisa is a past president of the MOMS Club of Lower Macungie East. In her “spare” time, Lisa teaches piano to school-age children.
- Zoila Bonilla Paul of Bethlehem is a stay-at-home mom to two girls – a 5-year-old and a 14-month-old. Zoila is a member of her local “moms’ club” and says she is “well-versed in the fun that children can bring.”
- Beth Sharpless of Emmaus works part time in a local emergency department as a nurse and part time from home as a customer support specialist. She has two children -- a boy who is almost 2 and a 5-year-old girl. She says they love spending time outdoors and dancing.
If you would like to become a part of the Moms Council and/or have ideas for future Moms Talk questions, please email jennifer.marangos@patch.com.
For those who believe purely in person autonomy--Why didn't the German court also outlaw piercing an infant's ears? That is a purely cosmetic procedure with no medical benefits. The religious issue is a weighty one and ought to command our respect--but a limited respect. Ultimately it is the medical issue that ought to rule a decision about circumcision. If it is causes unjustified pain then it must be proscribed. So we have to ask, Is the pain, however minimal, "justified"? Please continue reading below.
Further, studies in Africa have shown that circumcised men are far less likely to contract AIDS and thus there is definitely a medically justified reason for circumcision. If it protects against AIDS it might protect against other diseases as well. And so in the overwhelming majority of cases circumcision does no medical harm and may serve some medical benefit. See below for the religious "benefits" of circumcision.
The second reason, less well articulated in the literature, has to do with sex. In Judaism it is a religious obligation to please one's wife sexually and to do one's best to enable her to climax first. A circumcised penis is a bit less sensitive and thus will remain erect longer and hence increase the likelihood of giving more pleasure to the female partner--with only a minimal diminishing of sexual felling in the man. This is, perhaps surprisingly, a religious issue that the earliest rabbis discuss in the Talmud. They even, in their naive "wisdom," propose that a husband's reward for allowing his wife to "seminate" (climax) first is that a male child will result. Contexual sexism aside, the concern for a woman's sexual pleasure is unique and obvious in this teaching.
Jewish law not only requires that one not take unnecessary risks, it requires that one do everything possible to save a life--which has infinite value--and even requires the breaking of all but three Jewish laws, if necessary, to preserve a life. (One cannot, for example, murder or commit adultery to save a life.) So, therefore, although I have never heard this discussed in rabbinic circles, it is nevertheless true that, should medical science conclude that circumcision is an unnecessary or unjustified risk to an infant boy's health, then Jewish law would, ironically, REQUIRE that the practice to be stopped. God, in Jewish teaching, is inextricably bound to Truth and medical and scientific truth is as valid as the religious truths of the Torah and its subsequent interpretations. While there are many interpretations of Torah, the vast majority of Jewish scholars and teachers over the millennia have agreed that religious truth must conform to scientific truth. Truth always leads one to God, never away from God.
In the UK with the introduction of the NHS in 1947, circumcision rates dropped dramatically as it became an out of pocket expense for a medically unnecessary procedure. In the US, however, it rose after the Second World War – possibly due to the number of GI’s circumcised by service doctors. Apparently at the Battle of Guadalcanal, there was mass circumcision of US soldiers in the Pacific in response to "an outbreak of phimosis and paraphimosis" The main reason given by parents in the US for circumcision is "concerns about the attitudes of peers” and “to look like their fathers.” It has nothing to do with sexual performance in the bedroom and everything to do with looking like a regular guy in the locker room.
Recent findings on the effect of circumcision on the spread of HIV and HPV viruses are very important -- but it should be noted that the decision in the Cologne court in Germany and the reason most American men are circumcised have nothing to do with the spread of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps they should--but they don't.
It also only applies in the jurisdiction where the court ruling was made in. When I had to make the decision, there was a number of forms to sign to waive liability for the doctor, I wish there would have been more educational material and true facts and statistics presented. Parents are given so much information leading up to giving birth but circumcision facts are not part of that . You think you make a reasonably informed decision that your child will benefit from for the rest of his life just to later realize it was truly not necessary.
2. sexual performance has no correlation with fertility... 3. Circumcision in America was not very common initially, and the current practice is largely due to the efforts of John Harvey Kellogg... (the guy who invented corn flakes) who was an avid sexual abstinence advocate, even within a marriage, and thought that masturbation caused death.
Also, in Germany and most of Europe, boys are generally not circumcised. My family definitely questioned my decision.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/07/10/an-age-of-consent-for-circumcision/let-boys-decide-at-16-whether-to-be-circumcised
Extensive studies have been conducted in Africa where the HIV infection and AIDS rates are at epidemic proportion. The results, as I’m sure you know, are astounding, so astounding that some of the studies were stopped midway because it was deemed unethical to NOT circumcise the control group. Circumcision alone -- with no other change in a person’s life or behavior -- reduces the rates of HIV infection by 50-60%. See below for the links to health studies.
http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Abstract/2000/10200/Male_circumcision_and_risk_of_HIV_infection_in.18.aspx (2) Male circumcision is endorsed by the World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/ (3) This link takes you to a synopsis of a study that assessed, “the efficacy of male circumcision for the prevention of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections and syphilis in HIV-negative adolescent boys and men.” This looks at circumcision beyond HIV infection. The researches conclude: “In addition to decreasing the incidence of HIV infection, male circumcision significantly reduced the incidence of HSV-2 infection and the prevalence of HPV infection, findings that underscore the potential public health benefits of the procedure.” http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0802556