Circumcision (US based dad to be)

Hey all,

My wife and I are expecting our first fairly soon here, she’s 35 weeks with a due date of Oct 1st. As part of my responsibilities before the birth, I have to decide whether to have the little guy circumcised or not. As much as I appreciate the perspectives of all the dads to be and dads from around the world, I am specifically asking US-based dads on their decisions and reasoning, since we live in the US.

I am circumcised, so my initial reaction was that my son would be too, but reading more up on it, specifically on this sub, has led me to be much more open minded. However now I’m truly 50-50 and don’t know which way I lean especially when taking into account some of the great points y’all bring up.

I have two main concerns with not circumcising. One is the social aspect. I played large team sports growing up and up through college, probably only 2-3 guys in the locker room were uncircumcised, so in my experience it was very uncommon. It’s not that anyone made those guys feel uncomfortable, but I would just hate to set my son up for even the chance to be excluded, left out, feel uncomfortable because he didn’t fit in. Kids can be kids and find any reason to make fun of or exclude other kids.

The second are the medical aspects. Because circumcision isn’t as common here I have heard lots of stories of needing to advocate at doctors offices, etc and “be the expert” even when in a room of medical professionals. It feels like an additional burden among everything else that comes with being a new parent to have to teach and watch medical professionals how to care for your child, especially when you don’t have the firsthand experience yourself.

My wife is very supportive in whatever decision I/we make, she has been a good sounding board, but as I mentioned we decided I would be the driver on this and so she’s letting me figure it out.

Anyways, thanks in advance for your thoughts and opinions. Like I mentioned, I’m looking for those US based present and future dads’ decisions and opinions. Feel free to dm if you’d feel more comfortable sharing not in public.

EDIT: Wow stepped away from my computer for most of the day after posting, and there are a lot more comments than I anticipated. I want to respond to each of y'all, so bear with me. Thank you to those who took the time to write out thoughtful responses and DMs- it is reassuring to hear from you. To those that commented saying how cruel I am for even considering this, thank you still for providing your opinion- I asked for it and appreciate it.

To comment on a recent trend I've seen from some of the comments- yes it is valuable to consider the international perspective, but I feel like past posts on this sub were inundated with international opinions, and I wanted to ask about the domestic trends and provide a post to get those perspectives from where I live and my kid(s) will live.

Regarding the medical issues/advocacy I brought up- we have anecdotally heard from others around the country (my wife is a part of multiple subs here for expecting moms and present moms, and is part of a discord chat of the same origin) that mentioned that some of these moms have had to explain to doctors how to care and handle an uncircumcised penis. Not sure if you want to call it bad medical schooling (we all would hope our doctors are going to be the experts), but I think the uncommon* nature of uncircumcised penis' here in the US probably plays a role in that. I would be ignorant to not at least consider this as part of my decision making. It is clearly becoming more common, even just from the responses here and others I know in my life. But it is not the easiest topic to discuss even with close friends, due to the religious and cultural origin here in the US, so I hope by even bringing it up and inviting criticism it can become a more normal discussion.

*And yes I get the irony of calling a medical procedure to remove a part of our bodies "uncommon", but this is the hand I am dealt here in the US.

This all has certainly given me a lot to think on and still trying to go through all the comments.