User: Charles II

I agree with Jeff that they should be circumcised, or at least taught to keep their foreskins retracted, before they start school. Let them choose one or the other. Otherwise, they will be in for a lot of trouble in the restrooms, lockerrooms and elsewhere.

A couple of things you said: "At birth, the foreskin is usually attached to the glans...By puberty, the $%!@ will usually have completed its development, and the foreskin will have separated from the glans. No one opens a rosebud to make it blossom. Parents should be wary of anyone who tries to retract their child's foreskin, and especially wary of anyone who wants to cut it off."

Then I said: Unfortunately, unlike rosebuds, the foreskin after its no longer of use does not atrophy, die and fall off by itself. Responsible parents, medical people, care providers and others, that DO know what YOU don't know, understand that separation of the foreskin from the $%!@ head can complete at any time from birth on up to age 10 or so in 99% of normal boys. Unfortunately, problems such as latent childhood adhesions, phimosis and others cannot be detected and treated unless the foreskin is checked for normal retractability. When I say "checked" I do not mean the violent forcible retraction that you hysterical anti-circ nuts envision. When a boy is learning potty training, if he still has a foreskin, he must learn to start attempting to retract it and as soon as it retract, begin his lifetime (?) chore of annoying daily foreskin maintenance.

I went through almost exactly the same thing. Fortunately, my older brother and cousin had already pioneered this territory and helped me get through it. We all agreed we hated our nasty foreskins and were determined to get rid of them at any cost. We didn't have a clue about circumcision yet, we were only about puberty age, we just knew we couldn't go through life being the freaks in school that we felt we were. Hence, we got our foreskins permanently retracted (harder for me than for them, as mine was loose and floppy, and then there was the extreme hypersensitivity to adjust to). Now, they are about as good as if actually circumcised, and we would never want to go back to being wrapped like that. Later, we learned there were other boys doing the same thing, each feeling all alone and many of us unwittingly fooling each other as well as all the cut boys in the lockerrooms, restroom, showers, swimming holes and camps.

Now this is really good. Someone suggested age 5, someone else suggest ed "the" age when a boy can understand this issue and can make his own decision. I have been arguing for the so called age of reason, generally believed to be around 7. But certainly no later than puberty.