Circumcision In New ZealandCircumcision In New ZealandI grew up and was circumcised in New Zealand.
Circumcision was never widely supported by society or the medical establishment there in my opinion. Therefore who was or wasn't depended very much where you were born. NZ had a society that very much did whatever the doctor said.
In the small North Island town where I was born no boys born around my time were circ'ed at birth. (I was born in 1965). However only five years later all baby boys were done. I can only attribute this to a change in doctor in this small town.
We moved to Auckland and the first circumcised contemporary I saw was at primary school. A boy and his brother were the only ones done. Then at high school, uncut was suddenly the minority. My school drew from the affluent Auckland suburbs.
The greatest point about all of this is that circumcision in NZ has always been highly localised and while boys born in the private hospitals in Auckland may have been almost exclusively circ'ed those born at the same time in public or rural hospitals weren't.
Stephen
"...in 1964 in Dunedin, where rates were lower than the national average was, a quarter of all babies born in hospital were circumcised. Three years later in Christchurch, a similar student study showed a rate of 65 percent. In 1972, half of Wellington boys born in hospital were circumcised, while four years later in Dunedin, the rate had dropped to 5 percent. By 1977 about a quarter of all Christchurch boys were cut and in the same year in Wellington, the rate was 21.5 per cent. The last comprehensive study was in 1989 in the Waikato, which showed a regional rate of 7 per cent, with Huntly's 15 per cent making it a hotbed of circumcision, compared with only 1 percent of male births at Waikato Hospital [in Hamilton]."
-"Foreskin's Lament" by Nick Smith
Metro, September 1999.
It's consistent with this decline that a GP estimated for me that the rate is now under 1%. In his city, Palmerston North, no doctor will do it. However, the position is radically different for non-Maori Polynesians (Samoans, Tongans and Niueans) where the rate by puberty approaches 100% and a boy who is not circumcised will be grabbed by a "raiding party" of his uncles and taken forcibly to be clipped.
There has been some discussion regarding NZ and circumcision lately. In the late 1950's and early 1960's NZ medicine followed the British example and began to move away from routine infant circumcision. Numbers of children receiving RIC have steadily declined and now the situation is that virtually no RIC is performed in public hospitals. Parents have to go private should they wish circumcision for their boys.
There is among the NZ population a sizeable community of Pacific Island peoples from Tonga, Samoa, Nuie and Fiji. These people have circumcision as an important part of their culture. In Auckland there is a clinic which is run by Pacific Island doctors which performs circumcisions for the Pacific community. Many of these are dorsal slit which is the Tongan method although the "American style" is also available. This clinic will also perform circumcision on adults if requested. As an older gay male I can report that on my visits to the saunas there are increasing numbers of uncut males. Certainly those younger than 30 are virtually all uncut. For most of these guys it doesn't seem to be an issue.
Rick (New Zealand)
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