Hygienic circumcision in France

I was surprised, when moving to the US, that circumcision of newborns, on grounds of hygiene, was so widespread. Indeed, I had never heard about people getting circumcised in France just for hygiene (without any kind of religious/cultural background, without any kind of medical reason), let alone having their kids cut for that reason. I knew, however, that medical circumcision had been liberally applied (depending on the physician, a foreskin that could not be fully retracted at age 6, sometimes even at age 3, resulted in advice to circumcise).

Much later I read vaguely that there had been a fashion of hygienic circumcision in the 1970s, but had no confirmation of that.

Lately, an acquaintance of mine told me this very surprising thing: in her family, it was a tradition to circumcise all males as infants, for cleanliness. Her family is neither Muslim nor Jewish, nor of British/American origin.

I've never heard about it being done in childhood without a medical or religious/cultural reason, but this does not mean it does not happen.

In one instance there was a man who said that he was fed up with treating balanitis in his young son — the boy maybe had a tight foreskin (unsure now), and got infected once in a while, the treatment was bathing his penis in disinfectant. The boy had been born in the US before his parents moved back to France. The man said that in retrospect he should have taken the opportunity to have the boy circumcised at birth.

I do not know if that man had another son born in France since then, and what he then decided. I however don't think circumcision at birth is available at any French hospital. One would, I think, arrange with some private clinic some months later (those that cater to, e.g., Muslims) and pay a few hundred euros. That may be dissuasive, compared to just ticking a box on a form at the maternity ward as it seems to happen in the US.