A 2024 study in the Journal of Pediatric Urology administered the validated Decision Regret Scale to parents of both circumcised and uncircumcised boys at a US outpatient urology clinic. The result was a rare null finding: 21% of parents in each group reported moderate-to- strong regret. The distributions were identical — same median (0), same mean (22), same range (0-75). Whichever choice a parent made, about one in five second-guessed it.
This symmetry is unusual in the regret literature, where most decisions show at least a modest tilt toward one side. The circumcision debate is culturally and politically charged, with strong advocacy on both sides claiming the other path leads to regret. The data suggests neither side has the stronger empirical claim. A companion study in Frontiers in Pediatrics found that even parents who went so far as to pursue circumcision revision reported regret scores comparable to everyday decisions — the procedure does not appear to generate outsized decisional distress.
The major caveat is the study population. Parents presenting at a pediatric urology clinic are not a general-population sample — they are there because something prompted a visit, which likely inflates concern and regret in both groups. The absolute 21% figure may overstate regret among all parents. More fundamentally, the DRS captures parental regret, not the preferences of the person whose body was modified. Adult men circumcised as infants may hold views that diverge from what their parents report, and that data is sparse.