Early childhood retraction

[Jim1]

I've seen a few reports where parents retracted their sons' foreskins in infancy and kept them retracted.
Supposedly as the boy grows this results in a very short foreskin that will easily stay permanently
retracted.   I wonder if this gives all the benefits claimed for circumcision without surgery and loss of
arguably erogenous tissue.

In one report the parents were shown by their doctor how to gently pull back on the foreskin at each
diaper change.  After a few weeks the foreskin was fully retractable and was kept there.  In another
report the doctor used a probe to separate the adhesions under the foreskin, so it was immediately
retractable.  This must have been awfully painful - boys who were treated that way at an age of
awareness report that it was.

One Canadian man told me that his foreskin has been retracted since soon after birth, and that if
he pushes it, it covers only about 1/3 of the glans, and normally stays retracted permanently.

Someone else said that this kind of faux circumcision was at one time popular with black people
in the Southern U.S. who could not afford to have their babies circumcised but wanted them to
look as if they had been.    One white Southern man said that the black woman who helped
care for him as a baby gave him that treatment, called it a "poor boy circumcision".

Wonder if anyone here has had experience like this, or knows anything about it.

[jdm]

Like you, I've read rumors about stuff like this. Perhaps most notably, I've read it being recommended to parents in Japan.  Here are some links about that.
http://15olivia.com/?page_id=391
http://kumakkey.pecori.jp/muki2.info/
https://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/11/14/doctors-recommend-mother-son-penis-exercises/
http://baby.goo.ne.jp/member/ikuji/skincare/5/03.html

If you are a parent considering this for your son, please exercise extreme caution.

[Hazeleye]

As a 4 or 5 year old boy, I was taught by mother to retract the foreskin to clean under it. As a result I grew up never having a problem with phimosis. Personally, with all the smegma that creates under the foreskin, I cannot believe that this is not taught more emphatically for hygenic purposes!

[thesevenpointfive]

Like you, I've read rumors about stuff like this. Perhaps most notably, I've read it being recommended to parents in Japan.  Here are some links about that.
http://15olivia.com/?page_id=391
http://kumakkey.pecori.jp/muki2.info/
https://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/11/14/doctors-recommend-mother-son-penis-exercises/
http://baby.goo.ne.jp/member/ikuji/skincare/5/03.html

If you are a parent considering this for your son, please exercise extreme caution.

Great links, what i don't understand is that all sounds like a great idea, why not retract the skin whilst young and clean the head, i wish my mum would have done that. I do wonder though whether if done regularly if the foreskin would remain behind the head and shrink as you get older

[Aftskin]

Great links, what i don't understand is that all sounds like a great idea, why not retract the skin whilst young and clean the head, i wish my mum would have done that. I do wonder though whether if done regularly if the foreskin would remain behind the head and shrink as you get older

Problem is these linked japanese web pages are talking about babies. That is way too young to be retracting a boy's foreskin, the skin is probably still attached to the glans and very delicate. A parent could easily damage the skin by trying to retract it, and cause the skin to try to reheal back to the glans with scar tissue which won't later separate like normal foreskin would, causing phimosis. Leaving a babies foreskin retracted would be very dangerous as it would probably cause paraphimosis. The parents would need to be constantly checking their son's penis, it's not realisticly possible to do it safly.

When the boy is years older, 4-5 like Hazeleye mentioned, that should be when to teach them to retract the foreskin and clean under there. If its is clearly loose enough, then he could be advised to leave it retracted, but the parents would still need to check and make sure any swelling doesn't cause paraphimosis. After a number of days without any sign of swelling I would think it would then be much safer, and if the foreskin was left retracted, it would quite quickly be outgrown by the penis so that it would be unable to cover the glans at all.

[Hazeleye]

The only problem with retraction of the foreskin as sevenpointfive and Aftskin respond to my comments about retracting at 4 -5 years is the then sensitivity. I know that later as a seven year old I was curious about having a withdrawn foreskin. The glans was so sensitive and painful of it being exposed at that point I did not continue.

It was not until I was seventeen that I had screwed up enough courage to try again in earnest to have an exposed glans. Even then the sensitivity was so strong that I was in a continuous erection for as long as the glans was exposed. Eventually the sensitivity did deaden. The point being, what kind of torture must week old boys be going through when they are circumcised at that age, before they become keratinized? This would be especially so if the foreskin has natural adhesions as suggested.