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'''Adamant father syndrome''' is the term used to describe the behavior manifested by many [[circumcised ]] men when they become fathers. <ref name="hill2017">{{REFjournal |last=Hill |first=George |init=G |author-link=George Hill |title=The case against circumcision |journal=Journal of Men's Health and Gender |date=2007 |volume=4 |issue=3 |pages=318-23 |url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=04ace5046cc27f01b8fbe4aa359c059778983912 |quote= |format=PDF |accessdate=2023-10-01}}</ref> The "adamant father" typically insists that any son born be [[circumcised ]] even though there is no medical reason for it and it is contrary to current medical advice.<ref>{{REFbook

}}</ref> the circumcision status of the father is the most important determining factor in whether a boy is [[circumcised ]] after birth.

The leading reason for adamant father syndrome is the compulsion to repeat the [[trauma]].<blockquote>Some traumatized people remain preoccupied with the trauma at the expense of other life experiences and continue to re-create it in some form for themselves or for others.<ref name="vanderkolk1989">{{REFjournal |last=van der Kolk |first=Bessell |init=B |author-link= |etal=no |title=The compulsion to repeat the trauma: re-enactment, revictimization, and masochism |journal=Psychiatr Clin North Am |location= |date=VanderKolkBA 1989-06 |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=389-411 |url=http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/vanderkolk/ |quote= |pubmedID=2664732 |pubmedCID= |DOI= |accessdate=2021-07-24}}</ref>

[[Ronald Goldman|Goldman]] (1999) reports that [[circumcision]] is [[trauma ]] and that trauma tends to repeat itself:

To illustrate the compulsion to repeat the trauma, [[George C. Denniston ]] (2000) tells the story of the intern who was in the hospital nursery circumcising newborn boys in the middle of the nightː

For instance, a medical colleague informed me that, a few years ago, the night nurse on duty in an American hospital telephoned a senior resident in the middle of the night. She said to him in alarm, “You had better come down to the nursery right now. One of the interns is circumcising babies.” When he arrived on the floor, he found the intern circumcising a newborn infant. The resident said, “Don’t you think that, before you perform circumcisions, you had better get some training? Aren’t you concerned that you might be removing too much [[skin]]?” The intern looked at him, and replied, “No more than they took off me!” Sadly this young man had failed to recover from his own trauma. Like many victims, he did not realise that, since the trauma of circumcision should not have been inflicted on him, he certainly should not be inflicting circumcision on other human beinɡ.<ref>{{REFbook

The best way to stop the cycle of [[trauma ]] is to stop circumcising infants. Non-traumatized [[intact ]] infants usually do not grow up to become circumcisers, so the cycle of trauma would end.<ref name="hill2012"/></blockquote>

Denial of loss is a second reason that some fathers adamantly insist that any son be [[circumcised]]. This reason is not incompatible with the first reason, so the two may coexist in the same individual.

}}</ref> Failure to grieve one's loss may leave one permanently stuck in the first stage of grief which is denial of loss. Men who have failed to grieve the loss of their [[foreskin]] and its [http://www.intactaus.org/information/functionsoftheforeskin/ functions] may not want an [[intact ]] boy with a [[foreskin ]] around to remind them of what they have lost, so such an individual may adamantly insist that any son be [[circumcised]].

It is very difficult for a father in denial of loss to protect a son from [[circumcision]]. One father exclaimed, "''What was so difficult in leaving my son [[intact ]] was not that my son would feel different in a locker room, but that I would feel different from him. I would then have to accept that I'm an amputee from the wars of a past generation.''"

==Prolongation of an outmoded, harmful, surgical [[amputation]] ==

Adamant father syndrome is credited with keeping an outmoded, medically-unnecessary, non-therapeutic surgical procedure alive. For example, in [[Australia]], the medical paediatric authorities announced in 1971 that [[circumcision ]] is not necessary and should not be performed,<ref name="belmaine1971">{{REFjournal

}}</ref> however, in 2018, [[Circumcision Info Australia| Circumcision Information Australia]] reported that four percent of Australian boys are still being [[circumcised]], apparently because their fathers are [[circumcised]]. The drop in [[circumcision ]] incidence in [[Australia ]] was credited to fewer fathers being circumcised.<ref>{{REFweb