Many men say they’re fine with being circumcised. What if that’s beside the point?
In this essay, I use “men” to refer to those with anatomically male bodies. I acknowledge that some people with male or intersex anatomy do not identify as men. Out of concern for readability and coherence, I have opted not to employ inclusive phrasing, though I affirm the importance of gender self-determination.
Many American men who are circumcised don’t seem to mind—and many think it’s a good idea.
I come to this conclusion because so many American fathers allow their sons to undergo the procedure. Just under half of baby boys are circumcised in U.S. hospitals before they go home, and many more (we don’t know just how many) are later circumcised in doctor’s offices.
If American men didn’t think circumcision was beneficial, they wouldn’t allow it. Draw whatever conclusions you want about why. Maybe it’s cultural conditioning, bodily acceptance, lack of awareness—but the fact remains: for many circumcised men, it doesn’t register as trauma or even a topic of thought.
There are also some men who get circumcised later in life due to foreskin problems or for cosmetic or other reasons. Some are happy with the outcome, saying it had no impact on their sex lives—or even improved them. Others regret it, saying they lost sensation or suffered other complications.
Most who wish they hadn’t been circumcised aren’t activists, just regular guys who discovered what happened to them as infants and regret it.
And then there are men who absolutely abhor having been circumcised and feel that it was a mutilation. They bravely stand on street corners, or advocate in other ways, doing their darndest to let the world know about the harms.
Perception, Pain, and Perspective
Similar surgeries can have different outcomes. My friend Martin once said: There is no dotted line on a baby’s penis telling the doctor how much skin to cut off. Penises are different, circumcisions are different, and people are different. Even those who don’t feel their own circumcisions were harmful can have empathy for those who do.
More broadly, people experience what happens to them—especially in childhood—in different ways. Those lucky enough, or foolish enough, to become parents ourselves try to improve upon what we feel were our parents’ mistakes. Or, we try to replicate what we think our parents did right. Despite our best efforts, our kids grow up and stillvow to do things differently.
Parenting is full of complicated and imperfect choices. And parents make all kinds of choices that involve risk, often guided by family tradition, convenience, or a desire for their children to belong. Injury-prone sports, ultra-processed foods, ATVs, trampolines, and hours spent on screens—all fall within the broad latitude of parental authority that American culture continues to protect.
While I’ve never campaigned against brit milah practiced by Orthodox Jews strictly as a religious ritual, I’ve been clear in my views about preventing routine circumcision. For me, this is part of a much bigger cultural question. How can we, as a society, do a better job of helping parents raise happy, healthy children? Having raised three kids of my own, I can say with confidence that I don’t have the answer about how to do this on an individual level, let alone a societal one.
Emotional Health Is Front-Loaded
My father’s “early weight hypothesis”—and to my knowledge no one has framed it quite the way he did—deserves serious investigation. This is why he also advised against routine circumcision and was a proponent of other less-invasive and more “natural” birthing and newborn practices when reasonable; such as skin-to-skin contact; breastfeeding on demand; no prolonged, restrictive swaddling; and being responsive to a baby’s cries vs. letting them “cry it out.” (Sometimes, he said, babies needed to cry, but it’s best to comfort them as they experience the emotional release.)
Dad felt if we could reduce the traumas of infancy and early childhood, the result would be adults who were more resilient, loving, and clear-thinking. A healthier society, he believed, would naturally follow.
It’s an incredibly powerful idea that we have the capacity to profoundly change society for the better, in a single generation, by putting the wellbeing of the newborn baby above other considerations.
Dad’s theory is simple, and probably correct, but its application is unwieldy and complex. Life’s earliest moments are influenced by countless variables—biological, emotional, environmental, and cultural—all interacting in ways that are hard to isolate or measure. A mother’s stress level during pregnancy, the birth experience, family dynamics, socioeconomic pressures, and even the temperament of the newborn all play a role. To truly “front-load” emotional health would require systemic change—better perinatal care, education in responsive parenting, more parental leave, and a shift in societal values about what babies need. The premise may be solid, but the logistics of applying it in a real-world, imperfect society are daunting.
There’s also paradox and complexity in applying my father’s ideas. Shielding children from all distress is neither possible nor desirable. Struggle, disappointment, and even small doses of fear or frustration are part of what teaches resilience. A parent who swoops in to prevent the child from experiencing every difficult emotion can unintentionally deprive a child of the chance to develop the capacity for self-regulation, confidence, and perspective.
But some early traumas are neither inevitable nor instructive—they’re simply unnecessary. Routine circumcision offers no demonstrable psychological or developmental benefit. Avoidance is the only compassionate response. It’s the most basic expression of doing no harm at a moment when a person is least able to protect themselves.
Autonomy Begins at Birth
In the end, emotional and societal health isn’t just about how we treat infants, but how deeply we respect the right of people to become who they are, on their own terms.
