To offer the not-so-rare medical condition story, my wife and I were house-parents at a children's home and one of the 10-year old boys was having recurring infections because of poor hygiene habits. After the second time in the hospital to deal with it, the Dr. decided circumcision was the best course forward. The pain and discomfort that poor boy went through as he recovered is something I'd never wish on anyone.
I have 7 kids of my own now, 4 boys. I had them all circumcised when they were babies. The bell devices are clean and simple and even the chance that they'd have to go through that later was worth it to me.
Speaking as a parent of three boys, one of whom had to be circumcised in second grade or so due to a phimosis, I still feel completely comfortable with my decision not to circumcise my boys as infants. He experienced discomfort for a week or so. It was nothing extreme. He'll suffer far more when he breaks his first bone, but I'm not preemptively amputating any of his appendages to spare him that pain.
Doesn't this just come down to better education on personal hygiene? My parents had a talk with me when I was a kid about washing properly and I've never had an issue and I doubt I'm alone on that.
Dafq, I live in Europe, ex-USSR in fact, and Ive NEVER ever seen a circumcised man (and we have a huge sauna culture, so its not for the lack of possibilities)
To cut something from your child just for "looks" or smth...fck thats sick.
It can be difficult to perceive how a comment will come across on the internet because you (I don't mean you personally—it works this way for all of us) have additional context in your head, such as your intent, the past experiences that have led you to feel or see an issue the way you do, and so on. But you're literally the only person who has that context. If you don't include it explicitly in your text, it remains unavailable to readers.
From the perspective of someone just reading the words with none of that context, I can tell you for sure that your GP comment comes across as a personal attack—specifically, as snarky, aggressive, and judgmental, even crossing into mind-reading (telling someone why they did what they did), and all this on a topic that is highly emotional for most people.
I believe you that you didn't mean it that way! But that for sure is the likeliest default interpretation of your comment, and since "likeliest default interpretation" is what determines the actual impact of a post on the thread, we have to moderate when we see things like that.
I have 7 kids of my own now, 4 boys. I had them all circumcised when they were babies. The bell devices are clean and simple and even the chance that they'd have to go through that later was worth it to me.