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I think infant circumcision is barbaric, but I'm still raising a lot of eyebrows over this study. Wouldn't the level of parental attunement generally be a huge
by smeej 3y ago
I think infant circumcision is barbaric, but I'm still raising a lot of eyebrows over this study. Wouldn't the level of parental attunement generally be a huge factor? And wouldn't, for example, the parents of children in an era when 75% of boys were routinely circumcised, who opted their sons out also be more likely to be attuned to their children and skeptical of common practices?
It would also have been interesting to see data from another group who were circumcised after infancy, at different ages, to see if it was the infant trauma itself or the constant exposure of the glans that had an impact.
It's also an odd sample set to choose only those men who were willing to accept $4 in exchange for more than half an hour of their time through the Mechanical Turk program.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoIt's a very tricky thing to study. Maybe you could look at people who were circumcised then immediately adopted? Maybe twin studies? I think this connection is so far-reaching that you could never truly resolve the confounding variables. Frankly, I don't really care about the results anyway! As you neatly put it, we already know that infant circumcision is barbaric. That's enough!
- nabla9 3y agoI bet every Jewish comedian will reach for "The causal link is a Jewish mother tearing through self-esteem like a grizzly bear tears trough a tree" type joke. They would have a point. Circumcision can be indicator for causal reason associate with circumcision.
- adrian_b 3y agoAs a non-circumcised man, I am completely certain that circumcision is completely stupid and abusive, because the skin that is removed is one of the most sensitive parts of the body and losing it would be as bad as losing any other senses. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that someone circumcised as an infant would be traumatized in any way by this, because they would never know what they have lost, like someone who has been born deaf or without the sense of smell. Regarding the pain of the procedure, even if it could be somehow remembered, there seems to be no way how it could affect development, because many children may experience even more painful accidents from which they can recover perfectly without any long-term consequences. As you say, there may be only some indirect correlation, e.g. caused by the differences between the parents who would choose to circumcise their sons and the parents who would make the opposite choice.
- stephen_g 3y agoLoss of sensation is definitely a potential side effect but statistically quite rare - in my experience (fully circumcised for medical reasons as an adult), I definitely didn't lose any sensation. It's a little different, but I was actually surprised at how little things changed after recovery actually.
- smeej 3y agoI do think there's a different emotional response to accidental pain and pain deliberately inflicted by a (previously) trusted person, even for little children. If a child falls off his bunk bed and needs staples in his head, there's no relational harm from the incident. If anything, a caring parental response makes the child feel safer, knowing someone will intervene on their behalf to take care of them when dangerous things happen.
- oliwarner 3y agoSeems dangerously close to arguing that you could do anything to a baby. I think the problem with this sort of surgery is you will one day find out that somebody did this to you, that somebody took something from you that you can never get back. It's a trauma that I'm sure most people get over but some don't.