Everything about Infanticide totally explained
Infanticide is the practice of someone intentionally causing the death of an
infant. Often it's the mother who commits the act, but
criminology recognises various forms of non-maternal
child murder. In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible, whereas in most modern societies the practice is considered
immoral and
criminal. Nonetheless, it still takes place — in the
Western world usually because of the parent's
mental illness or
violent behavior, and in some
poor countries as a form of
population control, sometimes with tacit societal acceptance. Female infanticide is more common than the killing of male babies due to
sex-selective infanticide.
In the
United Kingdom, the
Infanticide Act defines "infanticide" as a specific crime that can only be committed by the mother during the first twelve months of her baby's life. The broader notion of infanticide, as described below, is the subject matter of this article.
Infanticide throughout history and pre-history
The practice of infanticide has taken many forms.
Child sacrifice to supernatural figures or forces, such as the one practiced in ancient
Carthage, may be only the most notorious example in the
ancient world. Regardless of the reasons, throughout history infanticide has been common. Anthropologist Laila Williamson noted:
Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.
A frequent method of infanticide in ancient Europe and Asia was simply to
abandon the infant, leaving it to die by
exposure. In the Oceania tribes infanticide was carried out by suffocating the infant, while in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in the Inca Empire it was carried out by sacrifice (see below).
Paleolithic and Neolithic
Decapitated skeletons of
hominid children have been found with evidence of cannibalism. Joseph Birdsell believes in infanticide rates of 15-50% of the total number of births in
prehistoric times. Williamson estimated a lower rate ranging from 15-20%.
In ancient history
Child sacrifice, the ritualistic killing of children in order to please
supernatural beings, was far more common in
ancient history than in present times.
In the New World
Archaeologists have uncovered physical evidence of
child sacrifice at several locations.
In the Old World
Three thousand bones of young children, with evidence of sacrificial rituals, have been found in
Sardinia. Infants were offered to the
Babylonian goddess
Ishtar.
Pelasgians offered a sacrifice of every tenth child during difficult times.
Syrians sacrificed children to
Jupiter and
Juno. Many remains of children have been found in
Gezer excavations with signs of sacrifice. Child skeletons with the marks of sacrifice have been found also in
Egypt dating 950-720
BCE. In
Carthage "[child] sacrifice in the ancient world reached its infamous zenith."
Greece and Rome
The historical Greeks considered
barbarous the practice of adult and child sacrifice. However, exposure of newborns was widely practiced in
ancient Greece and
ancient Rome.
Philo was the first philosopher to speak out against it. A letter from a Roman citizen to his wife, dating from 1
BCE, demonstrates the casual nature with which infanticide was often viewed:
» "Know that I'm still in
Alexandria. [...] I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I received payment I'll send it up to you. If you're delivered [beforeI come home], if it's a boy, keep it, if a girl, discard it."
In some periods of
Roman history it was traditional for a newborn to be brought to the
pater familias, the family patriarch, who would then decide whether the child was to be kept and raised, or left to death by exposure. The
Twelve Tables of
Roman law obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly deformed. Infanticide became a
capital offense in Roman law in 374
CE, but offenders were rarely if ever prosecuted.
Judaism
Although there are many instances in the
Bible of ancient Hebrews sacrificing their children to
heathen gods (for example,
Deuteronomy 12:30-31, 18:10;
2 Kings 16:3 & 17:17, 30-31 & 21:6 & 23:4, 10;
Jeremiah 7:31-32 & 19:5 & 32:35;
Ezekial 16: 20-21, 31;
Judges 11:31),
Judaism prohibits infanticide. Roman historians wrote about the ideas and customs of other peoples, which often diverged from their own.
Tacitus recorded that the Jews "regard it as a crime to kill any late-born children."
Josephus, whose works give an important insight into first-century Judaism, wrote that God "forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward."
Pagan European tribes
In his book
Germania,
Tacitus wrote that the ancient
Germanic tribes enforced a similar prohibition. He found such mores remarkable and commented:
"[TheGermani] hold it shameful to kill any unwanted child." Modern scholarship differs.
John Boswell believed that in ancient Germanic tribes unwanted children were exposed, usually in the forest. "It was the custom of the [Teutonic] pagans, that if they wanted to kill a son or daughter, they'd be killed before they'd been given any food."
Christianity
Christianity rejected infanticide. The
Teachings of the Apostles or
Didache said
"You shan't murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born." The
Epistle of Barnabas stated an identical command. So widely accepted was this teaching in Christendom that apologists
Tertullian,
Athenagoras,
Minucius Felix,
Justin Martyr and
Lactantius also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act.
Middle Ages
Whereas theologians and clerics preached sparing the lives of the newborn abandonment continued, as registered in both the literature record and in legal documents. At the end of the 12th century, notes
Richard Trexler, Roman women threw their newborns into the
Tiber river even in day light.
Child sacrifice was practiced by the
Gauls,
Celts and the
Irish.
"They would kill their piteous wretched offspring with much wailing and peril, to pour their blood around Crom Cruaich", a deity of pre-Christian Ireland.
Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn. In
Gotland,
Sweden, children were also sacrificed.
Russia
In
Russia, peasants sacrificed their sons and daughters to the pagan god
Perun. Although
Church law forbid infanticide, it used to be practiced. Some rural people threw children to the
swine. In Medieval Russia secular laws didn't deal with what, for the church, was a
crime. The
Svans killed the newborn females by filling their mouths with hot ashes.
China
Marco Polo, the famed explorer, saw newborns exposed in
Manzi. China society promoted
gendercide. Philosopher
Han Fei Tzu, a member of the ruling aristocracy of the 3rd century
BCE, who developed a school of law, wrote:
"As to children, a father and mother when they produce a boy congratulate one another, but when they produce a girl they put it to death." Among the
Hakka people, and in
Yunnan,
Anhwei,
Szechwan,
Jiangxi and
Fukien a method of killing the baby was to put her into a bucket of cold water, which was called "baby water".
Japan
In
Japan the common slang for infanticide used to be
"mabiki". It has been estimated that 40% of newborn babies were killed in
Kyushu. A typical method in Japan was smothering through wet paper on the baby's mouth and nose. Mabiki persisted in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
India and Pakistan
Female infanticide of newborn girls was systematic in feudatory
Rajputs in
India. According to
Firishta, as soon as a female child was born she was hold "in one hand, and a knife in the other, that any person who wanted a wife might take her now, otherwise she was immediately put to death". The practice of female infanticide was also common among the
Kutch, Kehtri,
Nagar,
Gujarat, Miazed, Kalowries and
Sind (
Pakistan) inhabitants.
It wasn't uncommon that parents threw a child to the
sharks in the
Ganges River as a sacrificial offering. The
British colonists were unable to outlaw the custom until the beginnings of the 19th century. Others state that "female infanticide was common all over Arabia during this period of time" (pre-Islamic Arabia), especially by burying alive a female newborn.
Islam
Infanticide is explicitly prohibited by the
Qur'an.
"And don't kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves too; surely to kill them is a great wrong."
Tribes
Infanticide in
tribal societies was more frequent than infanticide in both Western and
Eastern civilizations.
Lucien Lévy-Brühl noted that, because of fear of a
drought, if a baby was born feet first in
British East Africa, she or he was
smothered. The Tswana people did the same since they feared the newborn would bring ill fortune to the parents. Similarly,
William Sumner noted that the Vadshagga killed children whose upper incisors came first. If a mother died in childbirth among the Ibo people of Nigeria, the newborn was buried alive. It suffered a similar fate if the father died.
In
The Child in Primitive Society, Nathan Miller wrote in the 1920s that among the
Kuni tribe every mother had killed at least one of her children.
Child sacrifice was practiced as late as 1929 in
Zimbabwe, where a daughter of the
tribal chief used to be sacrificed as a petition of rain.
Oceania
Infanticide among the
autochthone people in the
Oceania islands is widespread.
In some areas of the
Fiji islands up to 50% of newborn infants were killed. In the 19th century Ugi, in the
Solomon islands almost 75% of the indigenous children had been brought from adjoining tribes due to the high incidence rate of infanticide, a unique feature of these tribal societies. In another Solomon island, San Cristóbal, the firstborn was considered "ahubweu" and often buried alive. As a rationale for their behavior, some parents in
British New Guinea complained:
"Girls [...] don't become warriors, and they don't stay to look for us in our old age."
Australia
According to
Bronislaw Malinowski, who wrote a book on
indigenous Australians in the early 1960s, "infanticide is practiced among all Australian natives." The practice has been reported in
Tasmania,
Western Australia,
Central Australia,
South Australia, in the Northern Territory,
Queensland,
New South Wales and
Victoria. Anthropologist
Géza Róheim wrote:
When the Yumu, Pindupi, Ngali, or Nambutji were hungry, they ate small children with neither ceremonial nor animistic motives. Among the southern tribes, the Matuntara, Mularatara, or Pitjentara, every second child was eaten in the belief that the strength of the first child would be doubled by such a procedure.
Family units usually consisted of three children. Brough Smyth, a 19th century researcher, estimated that in Victoria about 30% of the births resulted in infanticide. Mildred Dickeman concurs that that figure is accurate in other Australia tribes as a result of a surplus of the birthrate.
Cannibalism was observed in Victoria at the beginning of the 20th century. The Wotjo tribe, as well as the tribes of the lower
Murray River, sometimes killed a newborn to feed an older sibling.
Thomas Robert Malthus wrote that, in the New South Wales region, when the mother died sucking infants were buried alive with her. In the
Darling River region, infanticide was practiced "by a blow on the back of the head, by strangling with a rope, or chocking with
sand".
In Queensland a tribal woman could have children after the age of thirty. Otherwise babies would be killed.
The
Aranda tribes in the Northern Territory used the method of choking the newborn with
coal, sand or kill her with a stick.
According to
James George Frazer, in the Beltana tribes in South Australia it was customary to kill the first-born.
Twins were always killed by the
Arrernte in central Australia.
Aram Yengoyan calculated that, in Western Australia, the Pitjandjara people killed 19% of their newborns.
In the 19th century the native
Tasmanians were exterminated by the colonists, who regarded them as a degenerate race. Richard H. Davies (fl. 1830s - 1887), a brother of Archdeacon Davies, wrote that Tasmanian "females have been known to desert their infants for the sake of suckling the puppies", which were later used for hunting. Like other tribal Australians, when the mother died the child was buried as well. Families were supposed to rear no more than two children. Writing about the natives,
Raymond Firth noted: "If another child is born, it's buried in the earth and covered with stones".
Hawaii
In
Hawaii infanticide was a socially sanctioned practice before the
Christian missions. Infanticidal methods included strangling the children or, more frequently, burying them alive.
Tahiti
Infanticide was quite intense in
Tahiti.
North America
Infanticide and child sacrifice was practiced in the New World at times when in
Western Europe it was largely abandoned.
Inuit
There is no agreement about the actual estimates of the frequency of newborn female infanticide in the
Eskimo population.
Carmel Schrire mentions diverse studies ranging from 15-50% to 80%.
Polar Eskimos killed the child by throwing him or her into the sea. There is even a legend in
Eskimo folklore, "
The Unwanted Child", where a mother throws her child into the
fjord.
The
Yukon and the Mahlemuit tribes of
Alaska exposed the female newborns by first stuffing their mouths with grass before leaving them to die. In
Arctic Canada the Eskimos exposed their babies on the ice and left to die.
Canada
The
Handbook of North American Indians reports infanticide and cannibalism among the
Dene Indians and those of the
Mackenzie Mountains.
Native Americans
In the Eastern
Shoshone there was a scarcity of Indian women as a result of female infanticide. For the
Maidu native Americans twins were so dangerous that they not only killed them, but the mother as well. In the region known today as southern
Texas, the Mariame Indians practiced infanticide of females on a large scale. Wives had to be obtained from neighboring groups.
Mexico
Bernal Díaz recounted that, after landing on the
Veracruz coast, they came across a temple dedicated to
Tezcatlipoca.
"That day they'd sacrificed two boys, cutting open their chests and offering their blood and hearts to that accursed idol". In
The Conquest of New Spain Díaz describes more child sacrifices in the towns before the Spaniards reached the large
Aztec city
Tenochtitlan.
South America
Although academic data of infanticides among the indigenous people in
South America isn't as abundant as the one of North America, the estimates seem to be similar.
Brazil
The
Tapirapé indigenous people of
Brazil allowed no more than three children per woman. Furthermore, no more than two had to be of the same sex. If the rule was broken infanticide was practiced. The people in the
Bororo tribe killed all the newborns that didn't appear healthy enough. Infanticide is also documented in the case of the
Korubo people in the
Amazon.
Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia
While
Capacocha was practiced in the
Peruvian large cities, child sacrifice in the pre-Columbian tribes of the region is less documented. However, even today studies on the
Aymara Indians reveal high incidences of mortality among the newborn, especially female deaths, suggesting infanticide. Infanticide among the
Chaco in
Paraguay was estimated as high as 50% of all newborns in that tribe, who were usually buried. The infanticidal custom had such roots among the in
Bolivia and Paraguay that it persisted until the late 20th century.
Present day
The practice has become less common in the
Western world, but continues today in areas of extremely high
poverty and
overpopulation, such as parts of
China and
India. Female infants, then and even now, are particularly vulnerable, a factor in
gendercide.
In Africa
In spite of the fact that it's illegal, in
Benin,
West Africa, parents secretly continue with infanticidal customs.
In India
The practice has continued in some
rural areas of India.
According to a recent report by the
United Nations Children's Fund (
UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing in
India's population as a result of systematic gender
discrimination. In India there are less than 93 women for every 100 men in the population. The accepted reason for such a disparity is the practice of
female infanticide, prompted by the existence of a
dowry system which requires the family to pay out a great amount of money when a female child is married. For a poor family, the birth of a girl child can signal the beginning of financial ruin and extreme hardship'.
Hinduism
Hinduism prohibits infanticide but it's practiced by some segments of the
Hindu society. The northern states of
India have the lowest female ratio in India, purportedly due to female infanticide.
Sikhism
Sikhism prohibits infanticide and the
Golden Temple priests issued a prohibition of the practice among Sikhs. The Indian state of
Punjab, home to the Sikhs, has the lowest female ratio in India: again, presumably due to female infanticide and sex-selective abortion. The Sikh immigrants in
England also have low female ratio of children due to
female foeticide.
The situation in China
There have been some accusations that infanticide occurs in the
People's Republic of China due to the
one-child policy, although most demographers don't believe that the practice is widespread. In the 1990s, a certain stretch of the
Yangtze River was known to be a common site of infanticide by drowning, until government projects made access to it more difficult. Others assert that China has twenty-five million fewer girl children than expected, but sex selective abortion can partially be to blame. The illegal use of
ultrasound is widespread in China, and itinerant sonographers with plain vans in parking lots offer inexpensive sonographs to determine the sex of a fetus.
In North America
The
United States ranked eleventh for infants under 1 year killed, and fourth for those killed from 1 through 14 years (the latter case not necessarily involving
filicide). In the U.S. over six hundred children were killed by their parents in 1983. In Canada 114 cases of child-murder by a parent were reported during 1964-1968. Some of the cases that made news were those of
Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson,
Genene Jones,
Marybeth Tinning,
Melissa Drexler,
Waneta Hoyt (and in the UK
Amelia Dyer).
Child Euthanasia
Unlike the sort of infanticide perpetrated by very disturbed people, in some cases child
euthanasia is considered humane.
Joseph Fletcher, founder of
situational ethics and a euthanasia proponent, proposed that infanticide be permitted in cases of severe
birth defects. He suggested that it's a logical and acceptable extension of
abortion.
The Netherlands
In the
Netherlands, euthanasia remains technically illegal for patients under the age of 12. However,
Eduard Verhagen has documented several cases of infant euthanasia. Together with colleagues and prosecutors, he's developed a protocol to be followed in those cases.
Prosecutors will refrain from pressing charges if this "Groningen protocol" is followed.
The United Kingdom
The
Nuffield Council on Bioethics launched an enquiry in 2006 into
critical care in foetal and neonatal medicine, looking at the ethical, social and legal issues which may arise when making decisions surrounding treating extremely
premature babies.
The
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, in its submission, recommended that a
public debate be started around the options of "
non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the
best interests test and active euthanasia" for "the sickest of newborns". The College stated that there should be discussion over whether "deliberate intervention" to cause death in severely disabled newborn babies should be legalised; it stated that while it wasn't necessarily in favour of the move, it felt the issues should be debated. The College stated in this submission that having these options would save some families from years of emotional and financial suffering; it might also reduce the number of late abortions, "as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome".
Explanations for the practice
Diverse and often contradictory explanations have been proposed to account for infanticide.
Economic
Many historians believe the reason to be primarily economic, with more children born than the family is prepared to support. In societies that are
patrilineal and
patrilocal, the family may choose to allow more sons to live and kill some daughters, as the former will support their birth family until they die, whereas the latter will leave economically and geographically to join their husband's family, possibly only after the payment of a burdensome
dowry price. Thus the decision to bring up a boy is more economically rewarding to the parents. However, this doesn't explain why infanticide would occur equally among rich and poor, nor why it would be as frequent during decadent periods of the
Roman Empire as during earlier, more affluent, periods. Population control is achieved not only by limiting the number of potential mothers; increased fighting among men for access to relatively scarce wives would also lead to a decline in population. For example, on the
Melanesian island of
Tikopia infanticide was used to keep a stable population in line with its
resource base.
Customs and taboos
In 1888, Lieut. F. Elton reported that Ugi beach people in the
Solomon Islands killed their infants at birth by burying them, and women were also said to practice abortion. They reported that it was too much trouble to raise a child, and instead preferred to buy one from the bush people.
Psychological
A minority of academics subscribe to an alternate school of thought, considering the practice as "
early infanticidal childrearing". They attribute parental infanticidal wishes to massive
psychopathological projection of the mother's
unconscious onto the child, because of ancestral abuse by the mother's own parents.
Wider effects
In addition to debates over the morality of infanticide itself, there's some debate over the effects of infanticide on surviving children, and the effects of childrearing in societies that also sanction infanticide. Some argue that the practice of infanticide in any widespread form causes enormous psychological damage in children. Harris and Divale's work on the relationship between female infanticide and warfare suggests that there are, however, extensive negative effects.
Psychiatric
Postpartum depression has also been signaled as a causative factor of infanticide. Stanley Hopwood wrote that childbirth and lactation entail severe stress on the female sex, and that under certain circumstances attempts at infanticide and suicide are common. A study published in the
American Journal of Psychiatry revealed that 44% of filicidal
fathers had a diagnosis of
psychosis.
Genetic
Larry S. Milner, author of
Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life, a treatise on infanticide, writes in his concluding chapter:
So with this strata of support, I've concluded that it's a normal — a "natural"— trait for a human being to be willing to kill his or her own child, especially during the first year of life, and that there are genetic factors which are determinative of this compulsion. When a society has an infant male to female ratio which is significantly higher than the biological norm, sex selection can usually be inferred.
"100 million missing women"
The idea of there being "100 million missing women", largely in Asia, originated with or was popularised by an influential 1990 essay by Amartya Sen. This gender gap may indeed be partly explained by female infanticide and sex-selective abortion. However, recent statistical evidence gathered by Emily Oster suggests that outbreaks of hepatitis B, which causes female fetuses to miscarry at a higher rate than male fetuses, may account for a large proportion, perhaps up to half, of the "missing" women.
In other animals
Although human infanticide has been widely studied, the practice has been observed in many other species of the animal kingdom since it was first seriously studied by Yukimaru Sugiyama. These include from microscopic rotifers and insects, to fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. Infanticide can be practiced by both males and females.
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