
Singer P!nk recently found herself at the centre of a vicious online debate after a photo on Instagram showed her two-year-old son, Jameson Hart, had been circumcised.
Parents around the globe used P!nk’s innocent family snap to argue about whether circumcising babies for religious or familial reasons was okay.
Mamamia spoke to parents from both sides of the debate to hear their personal thoughts about circumcision in Australia:
Kelly, Sean and son Beau*
Kelly and husband Sean had son Beau circumcised when he was just four-weeks-old. Although Kelly’s father is Jewish, it wasn’t for religious, but personal reasons.
“Sean, his brothers, father and step father are all circumcised. We felt that from a hygiene perspective, Sean would find it more difficult to explain how to care and clean an uncircumcised penis,” Kelly said.
“We have several friends who are medical professionals and they had strong opinions that we shouldn’t be going ahead, but I had my heart set on it. We weren’t particularly nervous and the practice in Sydney had a good reputation.
“I watched the procedure but it was the after-care that was more traumatic for Sean and I. That was when we began questioning our decision. I often wonder if we had a second son, would we do it again?”

Rebecca and Eddie*
With a Jewish father, it was very much an assumption that if Rebecca gave birth to a boy, he would be circumcised as a newborn.
Top Comments
Circumcision needs to be regulated to ensure public safety.
Firstly, only qualified people should be allowed to perform circumcisions.That should be a no-brainer that everyone can agree with.
Secondly, incompetent operators should be banned from performing genital surgery on anyone else!
Thirdly,, there should be strict protocols to ensure that the dangers of circumcision can be minimised. This means strict hygienic rules to minimise the chance of infection, and a test to ensure that the person to be circumcised does not have a bleeding disorder.
Fourth, medical circumcision or other genital surgery should only be performed when other treatments (e.g., the use of steroid ointments for phimosis) have been tried and failed. https://www.cochrane.org/CD...
Fifth, dangerous traditional circumcision practices such as metzitzah b'peh (oral suction of the circumcision wound) should be discouraged by public education and other suitable measures.
Sixth, no child should be circumcised against the objection of a parent. The informed and written consent of both parents should be mandatory.
Seventh, if a man or an older child is forcibly circumcised against his will, this should be treated as a sexual assault, and the perpetrator prosecuted accordingly.
These rules won’t interfere with most circumcisions and they don’t answer the ethical problem of genital surgery on minors, but they would reduce the medical risks of the procedures and deal with other abuses.
My brother, father,uncles etc are all 'cut' as is my sons' father, but our four sons are uncircumcised. We saw no reason- 'tradition' is trumped by more recent scientific opinion in this case. If science says there is no need to slice off my newborns foreskin I am happy to concur!