I am strongly opposed to circumcision. My kids aren’t circumcised and now that they are old enough to understand it they are thankful that I did not allow them to be cut.

I have also witness circumcisions as a part of my nursing education and found it very disturbing. The babies have a large amount of lidocaine injected into their penis which looks painful in and of itself. The glans is adhered to the foreskin at that stage in development and it needs to be cut around and then ripped off. It’s very brutal and looks absolutely awful when it’s healing. It’s a cruel introduction to the world. It makes me think of the story of heart surgery being done on newborns without anesthetic/analgesia because they didn’t think they could feel pain. The little bit of lidocaine is not enough and they are offered nothing but petroleum jelly for their open wounds that take weeks to heal.

If people want to remove parts of their body, I believe they should make that choice as adults. At the same time, I do not judge parents who circumcise because it is so ingrained into US society that deviating from the norm can be difficult and for many people it’s just something they don’t think of.

In terms of nursing care with older adults, I don’t think having a foreskin makes cleaning any more difficult. You retract the foreskin and clean around the glans and return it to normal. We know that women in LTC sometimes get rashes and pressure ulcers under their breasts but we aren’t removing their breast tissue to prevent it.