If there's one discussion you can understand a pregnant woman procrastinating on, it's circumcision. Being a woman, you're darned if you do and darned if you don't.
We don't have penises. We were never circumcised (hopefully). And that makes us complete hypocrites when we speak up on the issue.
If you know you're having a boy, or you're opting to be surprised by "who" comes out on delivery day, waiting to have the foreskin fight could turn you and your significant other into the infamous couple who had the first knock-down drag-out in your hospital's delivery ward.
Don't be that couple. Let Dad decide.
What, you can't believe what you just read? An empowered woman and mother ceding control of a major moment in her child's life to a man?
Let me say it again. Women can only know so much about this issue. I read authoritative sources about circumcision while I was pregnant with my "surprise gender" child. I was interested, engaged, and involved: everything that makes a good parent-to-be. And during that time, with the mystery hanging over our head, we should have been having in-depth talks about the procedure that we had a 50/50 chance of facing.
And yet, I couldn't bring it up. I talked about breastfeeding, spanking, even the dark possibility of death during childbirth and what I'd like to see happen.
I consider us supremely lucky -- on a number of levels -- that the child who came out of me was a little girl. Having that conversation suddenly after 13 hours of labor would not have gone over well. Bless my gentle Southern husband, he would have been unwilling to make a decision without my input. Which would have instantly set off my crab-o-meter because, gosh darnit, I make a lot of hard decisions for our child. It wouldn't hurt to let him make one of the big ones once in awhile.
I made the heart-wrenching decision to stop breastfeeding to seek treatment for my postpartum depression. I chose our pediatrician and took her on her nursery school visit. My husband weighed in on all of them, but in the end, the decision was mine for the simple reason that he trusted me to make the best decision for our child.
If we trust this person enough to procreate with them, we should be able to trust them with big decisions. That's part of parenting -- determining that your partner has a say in raising a child, and allowing them to play off their own strengths in doing so.
In the case of circumcision, men don't just have the penis -- circumcised or not. They have experience with the big issues: health, cleaning it, standing in a locker room, revealing it during sexual encounters. If they're against it, they have personal experience that says, "Whoa, Nelly, this is not something we want done to our little boy." On the other hand, if he's OK with it going forward, by all means, he's got the know-how to say this won't damage the goods for ... good.
I can't tell you what we would have done if we'd had a son instead of a daughter. I certainly wouldn't tell you what to do with your little boy.
But you can read thousands of pages on the Internet or you can trust the true expert: the man standing beside you. Let him have his say.
Image via Phil_Parker/Flickr
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Comments 124
Ummm...shouldn't the owner of the penis have a say? The penis does not belong to the father or the mother. I'm not down with removing healthy body parts OR giving the rights to people who don't own them. No, no way. Just like I don't want my mom making choices about my vagina, I won't let anyone make a choice for my son's penis.
I totally disagree. I am the one who (as a CNA) helped with a newborn circ at work. I am the one who bawled with the baby (I didn't even know the child or his parents). I am the one who vowed to never put my sons through that. I am the one who has done countless hours of research on the subject.
HE is the one who had the circ done long before his earliest memory. HE is the one who has never thought much about any of it. HE is the one who doesn't care what it looks like or how it works, as long as it works, and his does in fact, work.
I'm my sons' mother. If I don't stand up and say no to barbaric mutilation, who will? What right do I have to be called "Mommy" if hours after their birth, I decide my sons are "imperfect" and sentence them to a painful, totally unnecessary, cosmetic surgery, with no anesthesia?
I actually don't think I could disagree with you more.
Most of the ladies here have covered it, but I will add, most men are utterly clueless. If they HAVE done the research to find out what the foreskin actually is/does, they are either angry for what they missed out on, or they refuse to believe it, since then they'd be admitting they are missing something.