When my sisters had their children, to circumcise or not circumcise was done based on choice, and part of that choice was based on whether the boys would feel 'different' to other kids, or to their father. My eldest sister's husband wass not circumcised and so the boys were not, either. However when the eldest was 6 years old it became obvious that he had a problem - the foreskin was too tight and needed to be surgically loosened. He had, in fact, a partial circumcision, but under a quick general anaesthetic. It was quick, it was simple, he barely noticed any difference afterwards. He is now 40 and the father of 5 boys. I believe he has had to have at least one of his sons done too, for similar reasons.
By the time we had our boys, the 'thing' in Australia was to NOT circumcise boys unless there was a strong medical reason to do so. At least that was in the public hospitals. A friend of ours however found the opposite - the private church-based hospital put a lot of pressure on the mothers to have the boys circumcised. She and her husband were happy to do this anyway, because it made the boys "like daddy".
husband & I were happy to not have the boys "done". After all, they aren't generally in a position to compare themselves with their father - husband hasn't generally been in a position to 'show himself' to his sons (or his daughters, especially!) so why worry about whether the boys are similar? Besides, the difference between the appearance of an adult's genitals compared to a child's, can easily account for any visual differences.
Our friend who had her sons circumcised - I remember the problems she had with sons 1 and 3, especially. With the first one, he had problems with the dressing and infection - I had not seen a circumcision before, not so fresh (another of my sisters had her boys circumcised with no problems) but to me, this one didn't look right, it looked a bit too extreme. Where my nephews had been manually 'snipped' and it looked very natural, this first little baby of my friend looked red and raw. A very neat circular cap had been cut off, apparently using a plastic device inserted beneath the foreskin. It seemed to me a surgical "one size fits all" and therefore a bit risky.
When she had her third son, I was even more concerned. This time it seemed they had taken off not only every skerrick of foreskin, but a portion of the tissue behind it as well, so a portion of the shaft of the penis looked like raw flesh. By this stage it was the mid 80s and very few newborn circumcisions were being done anywhere, except at this particular hospital. If I had wanted to have difficult child 1 circumcised I would have had to fight for it.
By the time I had difficult child 3, I would have had to medically justify it, in order to have him circumcised.
However, there has been pressure towards circumcision again, from a source which I personally find surprising - a bloke I used to work with who always seemed to me to be the hippy type, the free-loving, forward-thinking "break with traditions" researcher. He claims to have evidence that circumcision protects against a number of potentially nasty diseases later in life, and also conveys protection on the female partners, against HPV (and therefore cervical cancer).
When we were at school we were taught about how the explorers Bass and Flinders sailed around Australia in a very small boat called "Tom Thumb". So here is a howler from an Aussie exam - "Bass and Flinders circumcised Australia with a forty foot cutter".
It's often remarked that Tasmania was the result. It's about the right shape...
(and the bit of water between Tasmania and the mainland is called 'Bass Strait' - well, it wouldn't want to be called 'Bass Crooked', would it?)
Marg