Why do I say this? Because I used to feel this way. I had done some research before I had my son. Before he was born, I felt I should let my husband decide on the circumcision, since he is the one with the penis. He is circumcised, so his natural response was that he wanted our son circumcised. I asked why he felt that way, and he didn’t have an answer. Of course this conversation was before I had become an intactivist and had done all the research I have since done. I now know that infant circumcision can permanently alter a baby’s brain. He can lose his ability to feel emotions and might even become a violent man. Circumcised men lost something when they lost their foreskin, but they don’t know the extent of what they lost. When a cut man wants his son cut, it isn’t so the boy will look like him, it is so he will feel like him. After all, what two penises look alike? What man really knows what his father’s penis looks like? And wouldn’t the child be more likely to notice that his father’s penis is bigger, and it has hair on it?

This horrible practice makes for a violent cycle of abuse that will continue until someone stops it. In our family I was the one who stopped it, and it is up to the mothers who are married to cut men to make the ultimate decision. Do not let your husbands decide on circumcision, since it is usually impossible for them to make an objective assessment. Of course this doesn’t include the men who are victims of botched circumcisions or those who are enlightened and realize the damage done to them. Those who were cut as babies never had their foreskins, so unless there are problems how could they be objective? Of course there are exceptions to this, but they are rare.

If your husband was circumcised later in life, his opinion might be less swayed by psychological issues. I say might because it is still possible his parents didn’t know how to deal with an intact child and forcibly retracted his foreskin. This has been proven to cause most if not all problems that ultimately result in children/men getting circumcisions later in life. The foreskin on a child who has yet to reach puberty should not be retracted by anyone other than the child himself. His penis is meant to be an internal organ until the foreskin detaches itself from the glans (head). Anyone who forces it back (no matter who tells the parent to do this, even a doctor) can tear the foreskin, causing infections and adhesions. Just leave it alone. Your son playing with it will eventually get it to loosen so that he can someday retract it all the way.

Let’s say your husband didn’t have any issues with forcible retraction but was one of the rare men who either had a tight frenulum or overly long foreskin, so he chose to circumcise himself as an adult. The best argument a woman can give to a man like this is to remind him that he chose that surgery himself, and shouldn’t his son be shown the same courtesy? Just because your husband had these issues does not mean his son will. Who is to say he won’t have a short foreskin, so removing any of it could result in painful erections or pulling skin from his pelvis to make up for what he lost.

There is no good reason to remove a baby’s foreskin. Every argument the pro-cutters use to persuade parents to cut can be disputed. UTI’s are not decreased that much, if at all. Forcible retractions account for more UTI’s than the foreskin itself. if a child is left alone, his chances are the same as any cut boy. STD’s? Really? Will your boy be having sex, or should that decision be left until he’s older when you can tell him to use condoms and not sleep around? The surgery might be more invasive the older he gets, but the older he gets the less likely he will need or want to be circumcised. The thing that most new parents seem to have a hard time grasping is that circumcision is not natural. It is not needed or necessary. It is harmful, painful and totally cosmetic surgery that you are subjecting your newborn baby to.

Circumcision can interfere with maternal bonding and could lead to his resentment of all women. Just remember that when a baby is born, he doesn’t know or care who his father is. His whole world revolves around his mother. So if he is hurt so soon after birth, his mother let it happen, no matter who ultimately decided on the circumcision. The mother will take the blame. And even though that boy will grow to become a man without the actual memory of that torture, it is permanently etched in his body and brain.

All parents want their kids to be happy, and they want the best for them. Prove it by starting your son’s life off the way you would start off your daughter’s. Take both home intact, the way they were born, and the way they were meant to remain. One last thing I wanted to add is that this post does not mean that men should not have a say in what is done to their sons. I’m only trying to say that a woman who does not want her son cut should not just wash her hands of the whole decision and let her cut husband make the final decision. If you let your son be circumcised, and there are any of the above mentioned problems, you WILL regret it the rest of your life. Nothing can happen to an intact boy that will make you regret your decision to keep him whole. Yes, he might have problems or infections, but they won’t be any more severe than what could happen naturally to an intact girl. All I ask is that a woman opposed to circumcision needs to fight for her son, since he cannot fight for himself.