Choosing to have your son cut or not

CDC (Center of Disease Control) does endorse circumcision.

https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20141202/cdc-endorses-circumcision-for-health-reasons#1

Interestingly, this article gives the U.S. circumcision rate of 65% in 1979. As a man who was born in the 1970s, judging by other men whose penises I saw, I would have guessed the rate exceeded 90% by a lot. As far as claims that circumcision prevents a lot of diseases, I suspect this is nonsense. I think Americans are obsessed with it from an aesthetic standpoint and find it is more convenient for grooming and hygiene.

As far as claims that circumcision prevents a lot of diseases, I suspect this is nonsense. .

The original historic claim for 'disease prevention' was of course prevention of masturbation.

The obsession with masturbation causing disease and moral and physical degeneracy started in the late 18th century with a Swiss doctor, Samuel-Auguste Tissot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel-Auguste_Tissot).

Over the next century and a bit further, it apparently caught on big time in the New World, be it for religious or maybe for financial reasons, much promoted by physicians and health counsellors and others of dubious repute. With mass conscription during the 2 world wars and lesser conflicts, it also became an ingrained matter of US military medical doctrine that circumcision was beneficial to maintaining genital hygiene in field and combat conditions.

It is difficult to wean a society from such long-held beliefs. Even now when there is no mass conscription or similar conditions in the field or in combat as existed in the trenches of the Western Front or the European and Pacific theaters of war (or Korea and Vietnam).

Circumcision of combat troops might have made a sort of instinctive medical sense in conditions of prolonged trench warfare or on exotically diseased South Pacific jungle islands. Though it should be that adversaries and allies did not do so and lack of circumcised troops did not adversely affect the fighting abilities of their men.

In any case, this is now in the past and will probably not repeat itself in any near future.

The original historic claim for 'disease prevention' was of course prevention of masturbation.

The obsession with masturbation causing disease and moral and physical degeneracy started in the late 18th century with a Swiss doctor, Samuel-Auguste Tissot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel-Auguste_Tissot).

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from wikipedia

A well reputed Calvinist Protestant neurologist, physician, professor . . . .

In 1760, he published L'Onanisme, his own comprehensive medical treatise on the purported ill-effects of masturbation.[3] Citing case studies of young male masturbators amongst his patients in Lausanne as basis for his reasoning, Tissot argued that semen was an "essential oil" and "stimulus" that, when lost from the body in great amounts, would cause "a perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason; blurred vision, all the nervous disorders, all types of gout and rheumatism, weakening of the organs of generation, blood in the urine, disturbance of the appetite, headaches and a great number of other disorders."

His treatise was presented as a scholarly, scientific work in a time when experimental physiology was practically nonexistent.

First, you cannot trust the scientific or medical writings by anyone reputed to be a religious something or other.

Second, the wikipedia statement

His treatise was presented as a scholarly, scientific work in a time when experimental physiology was practically nonexistent.

pretty much tells it all. His writings are of an ignorant person who did not know what he did not know.

The old Islamic writings did purport health benefits.

The Jews do NOT circumcise for health reasons or to limit masturbation. It was purely religious practice.

Why Do Jews Circumcise?

Genesis 17, 10-14: "This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; every man child among you shall be circumcised."

Jews circumcise due to some Biblical principles stating that it is the covenant to be kept between the Jews and God. It is the very essence of Judaism. It is symbolic of their tie with God and with Abraham. It is a command that is compulsory for them to follow and is practiced as a tradition by Jews. Circumcision is considered one of the foremost commandments for the Jews, surpassing even the feast day commandments of Shabbat and Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. Only on those two feast days should it not be carried out. In the Nazi era, it was a sign to the Nazis that a male child was Jewish and could lead to execution; in spite of this, they still carried it out, even if they were in a Nazi labor camp. It isn't conceivable to a Jew to not carry out this commandment.

In the Nazi era, it was a sign to the Nazis that a male child was Jewish and could lead to execution.

Under the Nuremberg Laws in Germany, circumcision was not proof of being Jewish. It might be thought to possibly be an indication, but by law, Jewishness was determined by ancestry through various kinds of documentation: official birth, marriage, synagogue/baptismal records.

In certain occupied countries like for instance the Netherlands, the government required civil records to be kept of a person's religious affiliation. In others, like France or Belgium, keeping such religious/racial records was against the law. So in some countries, all that was needed was an outing to the local town hall and requisitioning of civil records.

In practice, many German Jews were known to their neighbors or because of their obvious name or advertising on shop windows or belonging to Jewish organisations (professional or not). Those who were secularized and non-practising, were determined by administrative means of various kinds of official records and documents.

In practice though an inverted sort of proof was implemented. Non Jews had to have a proof of Aryan descent, an 'Ariernachweis' which proved they were NOT Jewish by ancestry. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariernachweis

Luckily for American POWs and others who for various (medical) reasons were circumcised, being cut was not taken as proof. At least not in the West. In the Eastern territories, racial and occupation authorities cared less about strict legal niceties. Mainly because they cared less for virtually any and everyone. Jew, commissar, Bolshevist, partisan or a recalcitrant worker, all were equally liable to be killed out of hand just for being what they were.

Its not for me. Dont agree with it at birth.

How well it protects against HIV we have seen in the 1980th at least in the US where very many guys were cut! Back then it allegedly caused cervical cancer in the partner if one was not cut...

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Trotting out the protective qualities of circumcision is an old trope. Each era had its own particular diseases/conditions which were used to bolster the claim. If it wasn't mental and moral degeneracy due to masturbation, then it was a lack of fertility due to masturbation and then indeed cervical cancer and then HIV.

Did you have to choose whether or not to have your own sons circumcised, whether at birth or later?

Were they suggestions in favor or against (e.g. physicians or family)?

Our kids were born at home. So no doctor or hospital was involved. No medical view to suggest or comment one way or the other for our son. The midwives had discussed the option with our first child so we already had an idea of what our options are were when he was born. We chose to not have him circumsized but he has the option to do it later if he so desires.

Don't even understand why I should consider circumcision....in case of medical issues OK. If someone wants to have it done for personal reasons, also OK. But to force it upon someone else, not OK. To my opinion a lot of it is 'tradition/ritual' based...doesn't mean that all 'traditions/rituals' are OK.