Spock on Baby Circumcision

With his best-selling book "Baby and Child Care", Dr Benjamin Spock influenced several generations of parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, and to treat them as individuals (whereas the previous conventional wisdom had been that child rearing should focus on building discipline, and that, eg, babies should not be "spoiled" by picking them up when they cried).

The First Edition (1946) followed the conventional wisdom on circumcision: he recommended it. In the Sixth Edition (1985) he wrote about circumcising healthy children, "I strongly recommend leaving the foreskin alone. Parents should insist on convincing reasons for circumcision — and there are no convincing reasons that I know of."

In this video, he is referring to how some American parents would bring their child to a doctor with the complaint that the child was exploring his or her own genitalia in a sexual way. In these cases, the doctor would often diagnose the cause as an 'irritated' glans hood. In order to reduce the child's pleasure-motive(the whole underside of the foreskin is sexually sensitive to stimulation as opposed to the non-sexual shaft skin) and to reduce the ease of the child masturbating(circumcised males often need to use artificial lubrication to masturbate without rubbing themselves raw), the doctor would then circumcise the child.

Learn more how fear of children masturbating was a major reason why Americans began routinely circumcising: <a class="link" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cirp.org/pages/whycirc.html">http://www.cirp.org/pages/whycirc.html</a>

Learn more about the America's Forgotten History of Child Female Circumcision: <a class="link" rel="nofollow" href="http://tinyurl.com/37zmru">http://tinyurl.com/37zmru</a>