Circumcision as a safeguard against UTI?

Because my husband was uncircumcised, it seemed natural for us to choose NOT to have our sons circumcised.

When our first son was born in 1970 I was young and extremely naive. My doctor explained circumcision as a choice that my husband and I could make, one that would probably have most impact on our son in the locker room (and that most boys were circumcised). The locker room scenario seemed completely irrelevant when I considered the pain my wee babe would experience with the cutting and I said, "No!"

Later I discovered that circumcision was the trend in my own family, and that we were sort of 'freaks' for having chosen not to have it done.

I was treated to several lectures on the hygienic implications of the uncircumcised male-- if you were married to one you were apt to end up with cancer because of his being 'unclean'. And there were all sorts of anecdotes about various uncircumcised relatives who had developed problems as adolescents or adults and who had to be circumcised at that point in their lives Stuff like that.

For the record, my husband and sons have never ended up in the hospital because of infection related to their not being circumcised.

And around the issue of un-circumcision being detrimental to an infant male's health, (that is, that uncircumcised infant boys were more apt to get urinary tract infections), various studies down the years show that this is just not so. The fact is that the glans penis is a protective organ. Babies being exposed to forced retraction and cutting of the glans are more likely to have E Coli bacteria introduced, and are therefore more likely to experience urinary tract infections (and particularly if their mothers have a urinary tract infection. You can read a summary of these studies here.