Infanticide
Encyclopedia
Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide
, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.
In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible. In some countries, female infanticide is more common than the killing of male offspring, due to sex-selective infanticide.
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 cause, throughout history infanticide has been common. Anthropologist Laila Williamson notes that "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 (i.e. hypothermia
, hunger, thirst, or animal attack). Infant abandonment still occurs in modern societies.
In at least one island in Oceania
, infanticide was carried out until the 20th century by suffocating the infant, while in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in the Inca Empire
it was carried out by sacrifice (see below).
were between 15% and 50% of the total number of births, while Laila Williamson estimated a lower rate ranging from 15% to 20%. Both anthropologists believed that these high rates of infanticide persisted until the development of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution
. Comparative anthropologists have calculated that 50% of female newborn babies were killed by their parents during the Paleolithic
era. Decapitated skeletons of hominid children have been found with evidence of cannibalism
. The children were not necessarily actively killed, but neglect and intentional malnourishment may also have occurred, as proposed by Vicente Lull as an explanation for an apparent surplus of men and the below average height of women in prehistoric Menorca.
at several locations. Some of the best attested examples are the diverse rites which were part of the religious practices in Mesoamerica
and the Inca Empire
.
. 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." Besides the Carthaginians, other Phoenicians, and the Canaanites, Moabites and Sepharvites offered their first-born as a sacrifice to their gods.
In Egyptian households, at all social levels, children of both sexes were valued and there is no evidence of infanticide. The religion of the Ancient Egyptians forbade infanticide and during the Greco-Roman period they rescued abandoned babies from manure heaps, a common method of infanticide by Greeks or Romans, and were allowed to either adopt them as foundlings or raise them as slaves, often giving them names such as "copro -" to memorialise their rescue. Strabo
considered it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared. Diodorus indicates infanticide was a punishable offence. Egypt was heavily dependent on the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate the land and in years of low inundation severe famine could occur with breakdowns in social order resulting, notably between 930-1070 AD and 1180-1350 AD. Instances of cannibalism are recorded during these periods but it is unknown if this happened during the pharaonic era of Ancient Egypt. Beatrix Midant-Reynes describes human sacrifice as having occurred at Abydos in the early dynastic period (c. 3150-2850 BCE), while Jan Assmann
asserts there is no clear evidence of human sacrifice ever happening in Ancient Egypt.
According to Shelby Brown, Carthaginians, descendants of the Phoenicia
ns, sacrificed infants to their gods. Charred bones of hundreds of infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites. One such area harbored as many as 20,000 burial urn
s. Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally.
Plutarch
(ca. 46–120 AD
) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian
, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo
. The Hebrew Bible
also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet
(from the Hebrew taph or toph, to burn) by the Canaan
ites. Writing in the 3rd century BCE, Kleitarchos, one of the historians of Alexander the Great, described that the infants rolled into the flaming pit. Diodorus Siculus
wrote that babies were roasted to death inside the burning pit of the god Baal Hamon, a bronze statue.
The historical Greeks considered the practice of adult and child sacrifice barbarous. However, exposure of newborns was widely practiced in ancient Greece
. In Greece the decision to expose a child was typically the father's, although in Sparta the decision was made by a group of elders. Exposure was the preferred method of disposal, as that act in itself was not murder; moreover, the exposed child technically had a chance of being rescued by the gods or any passersby. This very situation was a recurring motif in Greek mythology
.
To notify the neighbors of a birth of a child, a woolen strip was hung over the front door - this indicated a female baby. An olive branch indicated a boy had been born. Families did not always keep their new child. After a woman had a baby, she would show it to her husband. If the husband accepted it, it would live, but if he refused it, it would die. Babies would often be rejected if they were illegitimate, unhealthy or deformed, the wrong sex (female for example), or too great a burden on the family. These babies would not be directly killed, but put in a clay pot or jar and deserted outside the front door or on the roadway. In ancient Greek religion, this practice took the responsibility away from the parents because the child would die of natural causes, for example hunger, asphyxiation or exposure to the elements.
The practice was prevalent in ancient Rome
, as well. 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:
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 die by exposure. The Twelve Tables
of Roman law
obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly deformed. The concurrent practices of slavery
and infanticide contributed to the "background noise
" of the crises during the Republic.
Infanticide became a capital offense in Roman law in 374 AD
, but offenders were rarely if ever prosecuted.
According to mythological legend, Romulus and Remus
, twin infant sons of the war god, Mars
, survived near-infanticide after being tossed into the Tiber River. According to the mythology, they were raised by wolves and later founded the city of Rome.
Judaism prohibits infanticide, and has for some time, dating back to at least early Common Era
. 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 1st-century Judaism, wrote that God "forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward."
In his book Germania
, Tacitus
wrote that the ancient Germanic tribes enforced a similar prohibition. He found such mores remarkable and commented: "[The Germani] 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 would be killed before they had been given any food." Usually children born out of wedlock were disposed that way.
In his highly influential Pre-historic Times, John Lubbock
described burnt bones indicating the practice of child sacrifice in pagan Britain.
The last canto, Marjatan poika (Son of Marjatta), of Finnish national epic
Kalevala
describes an assumed infanticide. Väinämöinen
orders the infant bastard
son of Marjatta to be drowned in marsh
.
The Íslendingabók
, a main source for the early history of Iceland
, recounts that on the Conversion of Iceland to Christianity in 1000 it was provided - in order to make the transition more palatable to Pagans - that "(...)the old laws allowing exposure of newborn children will remain in force".
However, this provision - like other concessions made at the time to the Pagans - was abolished some years later.
rejected infanticide. The Teachings of the Apostles or Didache
said "You shall not 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. In 318 AD Constantine I
considered infanticide a crime, and in 374 AD Valentinian I
mandated to rear all children (exposing babies, especially girls, was still common). The Council of Constantinople
declared that infanticide was homicide, and in 589 AD the Third Council of Toledo
took measures against the Spanish custom of killing their own children.
There is one debated example of child killing in Old Testament, Jephthah’s Vow. Biblical scholars disagree as to whether Jephthah's daughter was actually sacrificed, or merely dedicated to a life of chaste service.
, exposure in the Middle Ages
"was practiced on gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference". At the end of the 12th century, notes Richard Trexler
, Roman women threw their newborns into the Tiber river in daylight.
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.
In the High Middle Ages, abandoning unwanted children finally eclipsed infanticide. Unwanted children were left at the door of church or abbey, and the clergy was assumed to take care of their upbringing. This practice also saw the birth of the first orphanage
s.
n society practiced infanticide as a form of "post-partum birth control". Regarding the prevalence of this practice, we know it was "common enough among the pre-Islamic Arabs to be assigned a specific term, waʾd". Infanticide was practiced either out of destitution (thus practiced on males and females alike), or as sacrifices to gods, or as "disappointment and fear of social disgrace felt by a father upon the birth of a daughter".
Some authors believe that there is little evidence that infanticide was prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia
or early Muslim history
, except for the case of the Tamim tribe
, who practiced it during severe famine. 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.
Infanticide is explicitly prohibited by the Qur'an. "And do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves too; surely to kill them is a great wrong."
The Qur'an
rejected the practice of infanticide. Together with polytheism
and homicide
, infanticide was regarded as a grave sin (see and ). Infanticide is also implicitly denounced in the story of Pharaoh's slaughter of the male children of Israelites (see ; ; ; ; ;).
, infanticide may have been practiced as human sacrifice, as part of the pagan cult of Perun
. Ibn Fadlan describes sacrificial practices at the time of his trip to Russia in 921-922 CE, and describes an incident of a woman voluntarily sacrificing her life as part of a funeral rite for a prominent leader, but makes no mention of infanticide. (It is, however, debatable whether Ibn Fadlan actually visited Russians; his hosts, referred by his writings as Rus
, may have been Viking
s.) The Primary Chronicle
, one of the most important literary sources concerning Russian history before the 12th century, indicates that human sacrifice to idols may have been introduced by Vladimir the Great in 980 CE. The same Vladimir the Great formally converted Russia into Christianity
just 8 years later, but pagan cults continued to be practiced clandestinely in remote areas as late as the 13th century.
In Kamchatka
, babies were killed and thrown to the dogs. American explorer George Kennan
noted that among the Koryaks
, a Mongoloid people of north-eastern Siberia
, infanticide was still common in the 19th century. One of the twins was always sacrificed.
, the famed explorer, saw newborns exposed in Manzi. China's society practiced sex selective infanticide. 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".
Infanticide was known in China as early as the 3rd century BCE, and, by the time of the Song Dynasty
(960-1279 CE), it was widespread in some provinces. Buddhist belief in transmigration allowed poor residents of the country to kill their newborn children if they felt unable to care for them, hoping that they would be reborn in better circumstances. Furthermore, the Chinese did not consider newborn children fully "human", and saw "life" beginning at some point after the sixth month after birth.
Contemporary writers from the Song Dynasty note that, in Hubei
and Fujian
provinces, residents would only keep three sons and two daughters (among poor farmers, two sons and one daughter), and kill all babies beyond that number at birth. Initially the gender of the child was only one factor to consider. By the time of the Ming Dynasty, however (1368–1644), male infanticide was becoming increasingly uncommon. The prevalence of female infanticide remained high much longer. The magnitude of this practice is subject to some dispute; however, one commonly quoted estimate is that, by late Qing
, between one fifth and one quarter of all newborn girls, across the entire social spectrum, were victims of infanticide. If one includes excess mortality among female children under 10 (ascribed to gender-differential neglect), the share of victims rises to one third.
the common slang for infanticide was "mabiki" (間引き) which means to pull plants from an overcrowded garden. A typical method in Japan was smothering through wet paper on the baby's mouth and nose. Mabiki persisted in the 19th century and early 20th century.
for illegitimate female children during the Middle Ages. According to Firishta
, as soon as the illegitimate female child was born she was held "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
, Bengal
, Miazed, Kalowries in India inhabitants, and also among the Sindh
in British India.
It was not 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.
some children were killed because of fear that they were an evil omen or because they were considered unlucky. Twins were usually put to death in Arebo; as well as by the Nama Hottentots of South West Africa
; in the Lake Victoria Nyanza
region; by the Tswana in Portuguese East Africa
; among the Ilso and Igbo people
of Nigeria
; and by the !Kung
Bushmen
of the Kalahari Desert
. The Kikuyu, Kenya
's most populous ethnic group, practiced ritual killing of twins. 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.
life in South Australia and Victoria reported that about 30% of Aboriginal infants were killed at birth."
population. Carmel Schrire
mentions diverse studies ranging from 15-50% to 80%.
Polar Inuks killed the child by throwing him or her into the sea. There is even a legend in Inuit mythology
, "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 Inuit exposed their babies on the ice and left to die.
Female Inuit infanticide disappeared in the 1930s and 1940s after contact with the Western cultures from the South.
reports infanticide and cannibalism among the Dene
Indians and those of the Mackenzie Mountains
.
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.
coast, they came across a temple dedicated to Tezcatlipoca
. "That day they had 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.
is not as abundant as that of North America, the estimates seem to be similar.
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 did not appear healthy enough. Infanticide is also documented in the case of the Korubo
people in the Amazon
.
vian 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. The Abipones, a small tribe of Guaycuran stock, of about 5,000 by the end of the 18th century in Paraguay
, practiced systematic infanticide; with never more than two children being reared in one family. The machigenga killed their disabled children. 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 Ayoreo in Bolivia
and Paraguay that it persisted until the late 20th century.
. The frequency has been estimated to be approximately 1 in 3000-5000 children of all ages and 2.1 per 100,000 newborns per year. It is thought that infanticide today continues at a much higher rate 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 sex-selective infanticide.
, West Africa
, parents secretly continue with infanticidal customs.
due to the one-child policy
. 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 this can partially be explained by sex selective abortion. 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. Recent studies suggest that over 40 million girls and women are 'missing' in China (Klasen and Wink 2003).
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 sex discrimination
. The UNICEF study has been criticized by the Indian Medical Association for utilizing outdated data and for deliberately demonizing Indians for the purposes of politics
, corresponding to an increase in poverty across the country. More than 1,000 infants, mostly girls, have been killed or abandoned to die in Pakistan in 2009 according a Pakistani charity organization. Infanticide of girls in Pakistan is attributed to a patriarchal society where women are less valued than men.
The Edhi Foundation
found 1,210 dead babies in 2010. Many more are abandoned and left at the doorsteps of mosques. As a result Edhi centers feature signs "Do not murder, lay them here.". Though female infanticide is punishable by life in prison, such crimes are rarely prosecuted.
province of Papua New Guinea
where tribal fighting in the region of Gimi has been going on since 1986 (many of the clashes arising over claims of sorcery
) women had agreed that if they stopped producing males, allowing only female babies to survive, their tribe's stock of boys would go down and there would be no men in the future to fight. They agreed to have all new-born male babies killed. It is not known how many male babies were killed by being smothered, but it had reportedly happened to all males over a 10 year period and probably was still happening.
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
), circa 1983. 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. The vast majority of infant deaths in the United States are female babies. Some of the cases that made news were those of Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson
, Genene Jones
, Marybeth Tinning
, Melissa Drexler
, Dena Schlosser
and Waneta Hoyt
.
In the United States the infanticide rate during the first hour of life dropped from 1.41 per 100,000 during 1963 to 1972 to 0.44 per 100,000 for 1974 to 1983; the rates during the first month of life also declined, whereas those for older infants rose during this time. The legalization of abortion, which was completed in 1973
, was the most important factor in the decline in neonatal mortality during the period from 1964 to 1977, according to a study by economists associated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.
applied to children that are gravely ill or that suffer from significant birth defects is controversial. Some critics have compared child euthanasia to infanticide.
In England and the United States, Older infants are typically killed for reasons related to child abuse
, domestic violence
or mental illness. For infants older than one day, younger infants are more at risk, and boys are more at risk than girls. Risk factors for the parent include: Family history of violence, violence in current relationship, history of abuse or neglect of children, and personality disorder and/or depression.
price. Thus the decision to bring up a boy is more economically rewarding to the parents. However, this does not 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, less affluent, periods.
Before the appearance of effective contraception
, infanticide was a common occurrence in ancient brothels. Unlike usual infanticide - where historically girls have been more likely to be killed - prostitutes in certain areas preferred to kill their male offspring.
in many subsequent court cases. The knowledge of the difficulties faced in the 18th century by those women who attempted to keep their children can be seen as reason for juries to show compassion. If the woman chose to keep the child, society was not set up to ease the pressure placed upon the woman, legally, socially or economically.
In mid-18th century Britain there was assistance available for women who were not able to raise their children. The Foundling Hospital opened in 1756 and was able to take in some of the illegitimate children. However, the conditions within the hospital caused Parliament
to withdraw funding and the governors to live off of their own incomes. This resulted in a stringent entrance policy, with the committee requiring that the hospital:
'Will not receive a child that is more than a year old, nor the child of a domestic servant, nor any child whose father can be compelled to maintain it'.
Once a mother had admitted her child to the hospital, the hospital did all it could to ensure that the parent and child were not re-united.
Macfarlane argues in Illegitimacy and Illegitimates in Britain (1980) that English society greatly concerned itself with the burden that a bastard child places upon its communities and had gone to some lengths to ensure that the father of the child is identified in order to maintain its wellbeing. Assistance could be gained through maintenance payments from the father, however, this was capped ‘at a miserable 2s and 6d a week’. If the father got into arrears with the payments he could only be asked ‘to pay a maximum of 13 weeks arrears’.
Despite the accusations of some that women were getting a free hand-out there is evidence that many women were far from receiving adequate assistance from their parish. ‘Within Leeds in 1822 … relief was limited to 1s per week’. Sheffield required women to enter the workhouse
, whereas Halifax gave no relief to the women who required it. The prospect of entering the workhouse was certainly something to be avoided. Lionel Rose quotes Dr Joseph Rogers in Massacre of the Innocents … (1986). Dr Rogers, who was employed by a London workhouse in 1856 stated that conditions in the nursery were ‘wretchedly damp and miserable … [and] … overcrowded with young mothers and their infants’.
The loss of social standing for a servant girl was a particular problem in respect of producing a bastard child as they relied upon a good character reference in order to maintain their job and more importantly, to get a new or better job. In a large number of trials for the crime of infanticide, it is the servant girl that stood accused. The disadvantage of being a servant girl is that they had to live to the social standards of their superiors or risk dismissal and no references. Whereas within other professions, such as in the factory, the relationship between employer and employee was much more anonymous and the mother would be better able to make other provisions, such as employing a minder. The result of the lack of basic social care in Britain in the 18th and 19th century is the numerous accounts in court records of women, particularly servant girls, standing trial for the murder of their child.
estimated that among Paleolithic hunters 23-50% of newborn children were killed. He argued that the goal was to preserve the 0.001% population growth of that time. He also wrote that female infanticide may be a form of population control
. 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 Melanesia
n island of Tikopia
infanticide was used to keep a stable population in line with its resource base
. Research by Marvin Harris and William Divale
supports this argument, it has been cited as an example of environmental determinism
.
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. Larry S. Milner, author of Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life, a treatise on infanticide, believes that superstition has always reigned supreme in tribal religion. In chapters 9 through 21 Milner explores diverse customs and taboos as possible causes of infanticide, from punishment and shame to poverty, famine, revenge, depression and insanity and superstitious omens.
". They attribute parental infanticidal wishes to massive projection or displacement
of the parents' unconscious
onto the child, because of intergenerational, ancestral abuse by their own parents. Clearly, an infanticidal parent may have multiple motivations, conflicts, emotions, and thoughts about their baby and their relationship with their baby, which are often colored both by their individual psychology, current relational context and attachment history, and, perhaps most saliently, their psychopathology (See also Psychiatric section below) Almeida, Merminod, and Schechter suggest that parents with fantasies, projections, and delusions involving infanticide need to be taken seriously and assessed carefully, whenever possible, by an interdisciplinary team that includes infant mental health specialists or mental health practitioners who have experience in working with parents, children, and families.
reported that even infanticidal mothers in New Guinea
, who ate a child, did not affect the personality development of the surviving children; that "these are good mothers who eat their own children". Harris and Divale's work on the relationship between female infanticide and warfare suggests that there are, however, extensive negative effects.
is also a causative factor of infanticide. Stuart S. Asch, MD, a Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University established the connections between some cases of infanticide and post-partum depression., The books, From Cradle to Grave, and The Death of Innocents, describe selected cases of maternal infanticide and the investigative research of Professor Asch working in concert with the New York City Medical Examiner's Office.
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 father
s had a diagnosis of psychosis
. In addition to postpartum psychosis, dissociative psychopathology and sociopathy have also been found to be associated with neonaticide in some cases
In addition, sever postpartum depression
can lead to infanticide.
However, Milner's treatise includes at the same time cultural hypotheses for the practice, and his approach to the subject has been criticized as both scholarly and an idealized view of infanticide.
may be one of the contributing factors of infanticide. In the absence of sex-selective abortion
, sex-selective infanticide can be deduced from very skewed birth statistics. The biologically normal sex ratio for humans at birth is approximately 105 males per 100 females; normal ratios hardly ranging beyond 102-108. When a society has an infant male to female ratio which is significantly
higher or lower than the biological norm, sex selection can usually be inferred.
, the Infanticide Act 1938 describes the offence of infanticide as one which would otherwise amount to murder (by his/her mother) if the victim was older than 12 months and the mother was not suffering from an imbalance of mind due to the effects of childbirth or lactation. Where a mother who has killed such an infant has been charged with murder rather than infanticide s.1(3) of the Act confirms that a jury has the power to find alternative verdicts of Manslaughter in English law
or guilty but insane.
state representative Jessica Farrar
proposed legislation that would define infanticide as a distinct and lesser crime than homicide
. Under the terms of the proposed legislation, if jurors concluded that a mother's "judgment was impaired as a result of the effects of giving birth or the effects of lactation following the birth," they would be allowed to convict her of the crime of infanticide, rather than murder. The maximum penalty for infanciticide would be two years in prison. Farrar's introduction of this bill prompted liberal bioethics scholar Jacob M. Appel
to call her "the bravest politician in America."
and increased contraceptive
access are advocated as ways of preventing infanticide. Increased use of contraceptives and access to safe legal abortions have greatly reduced neonaticide in many developed nations. Some say that where abortion is illegal, as in Pakistan, infanticide would decline if safer legal abortions were available.
Screening for psychiatric disorders or risk factors, and providing treatment or assistance to those at risk may help prevent infanticide. However in developed world significant proportions of neonaticides that are detected occur in young women who deny their pregnancy, and avoid outside contacts, so they may have limited contact with health care services.
In some areas baby hatch
es, safe places for a mother to anonymously leave an infant, are offered, in part to reduce the rate of infanticide. In other places, like the United States, safe-haven laws allow mothers to anonymously give infants to designated officials. Typically such babies are put up for adoption, or cared for in orphanages.
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 rotifer
s and insect
s, to fish
, amphibian
s, bird
s and mammal
s. Infanticide can be practiced by both male
s and female
s.
Neonaticide
Neonaticide is the killing of a newborn infant less than 24 hours old. It can be divided into criminal neonaticide, which is usually by a mother under severe psychological stress, and customary neonaticide, a practice used in certain cultures at certain times to limit the population.Neonaticide is...
, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.
In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible. In some countries, female infanticide is more common than the killing of male offspring, due to sex-selective infanticide.
History and pre-history
The practice of infanticide has taken many forms. Child sacrificeChild sacrifice
Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please, propitiate or force a god or supernatural beings in order to achieve a desired result...
to supernatural figures or forces, such as the one practiced in ancient Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
, may be only the most notorious example in the ancient world. Regardless of the cause, throughout history infanticide has been common. Anthropologist Laila Williamson notes that "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
Child abandonment
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. An abandoned child is called a foundling .-Causes:Poverty is often a...
, leaving it to die by exposure (i.e. hypothermia
Hypothermia
Hypothermia is a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions which is defined as . Body temperature is usually maintained near a constant level of through biologic homeostasis or thermoregulation...
, hunger, thirst, or animal attack). Infant abandonment still occurs in modern societies.
In at least one island in Oceania
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...
, infanticide was carried out until the 20th century by suffocating the infant, while in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in the Inca Empire
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...
it was carried out by sacrifice (see below).
Paleolithic and Neolithic
Many Neolithic groups routinely resorted to infanticide in order to control their numbers so that their lands could support them. Joseph Birdsell believed that infanticide rates in prehistoric timesPrehistory
Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing...
were between 15% and 50% of the total number of births, while Laila Williamson estimated a lower rate ranging from 15% to 20%. Both anthropologists believed that these high rates of infanticide persisted until the development of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution
Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution. It was the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved independently in 6 separate locations worldwide circa...
. Comparative anthropologists have calculated that 50% of female newborn babies were killed by their parents during the Paleolithic
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...
era. Decapitated skeletons of hominid children have been found with evidence of cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
. The children were not necessarily actively killed, but neglect and intentional malnourishment may also have occurred, as proposed by Vicente Lull as an explanation for an apparent surplus of men and the below average height of women in prehistoric Menorca.
In the New World
Archaeologists have uncovered physical evidence of child sacrificeChild sacrifice
Child sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please, propitiate or force a god or supernatural beings in order to achieve a desired result...
at several locations. Some of the best attested examples are the diverse rites which were part of the religious practices in Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
and the Inca Empire
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...
.
In the Old World
Three thousand bones of young children, with evidence of sacrificial rituals, have been found in SardiniaSardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
. Infants were offered to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar
Ishtar
Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...
. Pelasgians
Pelasgians
The name Pelasgians was used by some ancient Greek writers to refer to populations that were either the ancestors of the Greeks or who preceded the Greeks in Greece, "a hold-all term for any ancient, primitive and presumably indigenous people in the Greek world." In general, "Pelasgian" has come...
offered a sacrifice of every tenth child during difficult times. Syrians sacrificed children to Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
and Juno
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
. Many remains of children have been found in Gezer
Gezer
Gezer was a Canaanite city-state and biblical town in ancient Israel. Tel Gezer , an archaeological site midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is now an Israeli national park....
excavations with signs of sacrifice. Child skeletons with the marks of sacrifice have been found also in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
dating 950-720 BCE. In Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
"[child] sacrifice in the ancient world reached its infamous zenith." Besides the Carthaginians, other Phoenicians, and the Canaanites, Moabites and Sepharvites offered their first-born as a sacrifice to their gods.
Ancient Egypt
In Egyptian households, at all social levels, children of both sexes were valued and there is no evidence of infanticide. The religion of the Ancient Egyptians forbade infanticide and during the Greco-Roman period they rescued abandoned babies from manure heaps, a common method of infanticide by Greeks or Romans, and were allowed to either adopt them as foundlings or raise them as slaves, often giving them names such as "copro -" to memorialise their rescue. Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
considered it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared. Diodorus indicates infanticide was a punishable offence. Egypt was heavily dependent on the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate the land and in years of low inundation severe famine could occur with breakdowns in social order resulting, notably between 930-1070 AD and 1180-1350 AD. Instances of cannibalism are recorded during these periods but it is unknown if this happened during the pharaonic era of Ancient Egypt. Beatrix Midant-Reynes describes human sacrifice as having occurred at Abydos in the early dynastic period (c. 3150-2850 BCE), while Jan Assmann
Jan Assmann
Jan Assmann is a German Egyptologist who was born in Langelsheim.-Education and teaching:He went to school in Lübeck and Heidelberg before going on to study Egyptology, Classical Archeology and Greek Studies in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris and Göttingen...
asserts there is no clear evidence of human sacrifice ever happening in Ancient Egypt.
Carthage
According to Shelby Brown, Carthaginians, descendants of the Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
ns, sacrificed infants to their gods. Charred bones of hundreds of infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites. One such area harbored as many as 20,000 burial urn
Urn
An urn is a vase, ordinarily covered, that usually has a narrowed neck above a footed pedestal. "Knife urns" placed on pedestals flanking a dining-room sideboard were an English innovation for high-style dining rooms of the late 1760s...
s. Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally.
Plutarch
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
(ca. 46–120 AD
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian
Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...
, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo
Philo
Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria....
. The Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet
Tophet
Tophet or Topheth is believed to be a location in Jerusalem, in the Valley of Hinnom, where the Canaanites sacrificed children to the god Moloch by burning them alive. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet by the Canaanites,...
(from the Hebrew taph or toph, to burn) by the Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
ites. Writing in the 3rd century BCE, Kleitarchos, one of the historians of Alexander the Great, described that the infants rolled into the flaming pit. Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
wrote that babies were roasted to death inside the burning pit of the god Baal Hamon, a bronze statue.
Greece and Rome
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. In Greece the decision to expose a child was typically the father's, although in Sparta the decision was made by a group of elders. Exposure was the preferred method of disposal, as that act in itself was not murder; moreover, the exposed child technically had a chance of being rescued by the gods or any passersby. This very situation was a recurring motif in Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
.
To notify the neighbors of a birth of a child, a woolen strip was hung over the front door - this indicated a female baby. An olive branch indicated a boy had been born. Families did not always keep their new child. After a woman had a baby, she would show it to her husband. If the husband accepted it, it would live, but if he refused it, it would die. Babies would often be rejected if they were illegitimate, unhealthy or deformed, the wrong sex (female for example), or too great a burden on the family. These babies would not be directly killed, but put in a clay pot or jar and deserted outside the front door or on the roadway. In ancient Greek religion, this practice took the responsibility away from the parents because the child would die of natural causes, for example hunger, asphyxiation or exposure to the elements.
The practice was prevalent in ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, as well. Philo
Philo
Philo , known also as Philo of Alexandria , Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew, was a Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria....
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:
- "I am still in Alexandria. ... I beg and plead with you to take care of our little child, and as soon as we receive wages, I will send them to you. In the meantime, if (good fortune to you!) you give birth, if it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, expose it."
In some periods of Roman history it was traditional for a newborn to be brought to the pater familias
Pater familias
The pater familias, also written as paterfamilias was the head of a Roman family. The term is Latin for "father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate". The form is irregular and archaic in Latin, preserving the old genitive ending in -as...
, the family patriarch
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
, who would then decide whether the child was to be kept and raised, or left to die by exposure. The Twelve Tables
Twelve Tables
The Law of the Twelve Tables was the ancient legislation that stood at the foundation of Roman law. The Law of the Twelve Tables formed the centrepiece of the constitution of the Roman Republic and the core of the mos maiorum...
of Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly deformed. The concurrent practices of slavery
Slavery in ancient Rome
The institution of slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the Roman economy. Besides manual labor on farms and in mines, slaves performed many domestic services and a variety of other tasks, such as accounting...
and infanticide contributed to the "background noise
Background noise
In acoustics and specifically in acoustical engineering, background noise or ambient noise is any sound other than the sound being monitored. Background noise is a form of noise pollution or interference. Background noise is an important concept in setting noise regulations...
" of the crises during the Republic.
Infanticide became a capital offense in Roman law in 374 AD
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
, but offenders were rarely if ever prosecuted.
According to mythological legend, Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus are Rome's twin founders in its traditional foundation myth, although the former is sometimes said to be the sole founder...
, twin infant sons of the war god, Mars
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
, survived near-infanticide after being tossed into the Tiber River. According to the mythology, they were raised by wolves and later founded the city of Rome.
Judaism
Judaism prohibits infanticide, and has for some time, dating back to at least early Common Era
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
. Roman historians wrote about the ideas and customs of other peoples, which often diverged from their own. Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
recorded that the Jews "regard it as a crime to kill any late-born children." Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
, whose works give an important insight into 1st-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
Germania (book)
The Germania , written by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus around 98, is an ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire.-Contents:...
, Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
wrote that the ancient Germanic tribes enforced a similar prohibition. He found such mores remarkable and commented: "[The Germani] 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 would be killed before they had been given any food." Usually children born out of wedlock were disposed that way.
In his highly influential Pre-historic Times, John Lubbock
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury PC , FRS , known as Sir John Lubbock, 4th Baronet from 1865 until 1900, was a polymath and Liberal Member of Parliament....
described burnt bones indicating the practice of child sacrifice in pagan Britain.
The last canto, Marjatan poika (Son of Marjatta), of Finnish national epic
National epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy...
Kalevala
Kalevala
The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
describes an assumed infanticide. Väinämöinen
Väinämöinen
Väinämöinen is the central character in the Finnish folklore and the main character in the national epic Kalevala. His name comes from the Finnish word väinämö, meaning minstrel. Originally a Finnish god, he was described as an old and wise man, and he possessed a potent, magical...
orders the infant bastard
Legitimacy (law)
At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another; and of a child who is born shortly after the parents' divorce. In canon and in civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate children...
son of Marjatta to be drowned in marsh
Marsh
In geography, a marsh, or morass, is a type of wetland that is subject to frequent or continuous flood. Typically the water is shallow and features grasses, rushes, reeds, typhas, sedges, other herbaceous plants, and moss....
.
The Íslendingabók
Íslendingabók
Íslendingabók, Libellus Islandorum or The Book of Icelanders is an historical work dealing with early Icelandic history. The author was an Icelandic priest, Ari Þorgilsson, working in the early 12th century. The work originally existed in two different versions but only the younger one has come...
, a main source for the early history of Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, recounts that on the Conversion of Iceland to Christianity in 1000 it was provided - in order to make the transition more palatable to Pagans - that "(...)the old laws allowing exposure of newborn children will remain in force".
However, this provision - like other concessions made at the time to the Pagans - was abolished some years later.
Christianity
ChristianityChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
rejected infanticide. The Teachings of the Apostles or Didache
Didache
The Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is a brief early Christian treatise, dated by most scholars to the late first or early 2nd century...
said "You shall not kill that which is born." The Epistle of Barnabas
Epistle of Barnabas
The Epistle of Barnabas is a Greek epistle containing twenty-one chapters, preserved complete in the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus where it appears at the end of the New Testament...
stated an identical command. So widely accepted was this teaching in Christendom that apologists Tertullian
Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...
, Athenagoras
Athenagoras of Athens
Athenagoras was a Father of the Church, a Proto-orthodox Christian apologist who lived during the second half of the 2nd century of whom little is known for certain, besides that he was Athenian , a philosopher, and a convert to Christianity. In his writings he styles himself as "Athenagoras, the...
, Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr, also known as just Saint Justin , was an early Christian apologist. Most of his works are lost, but two apologies and a dialogue survive. He is considered a saint by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church....
and Lactantius
Lactantius
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and tutor to his son.-Biography:...
also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act. In 318 AD Constantine I
Constantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
considered infanticide a crime, and in 374 AD Valentinian I
Valentinian I
Valentinian I , also known as Valentinian the Great, was Roman emperor from 364 to 375. Upon becoming emperor he made his brother Valens his co-emperor, giving him rule of the eastern provinces while Valentinian retained the west....
mandated to rear all children (exposing babies, especially girls, was still common). The Council of Constantinople
Council of Constantinople
Council of Constantinople can refer to:*Council of Constantinople , a local council*First Council of Constantinople, the Second Ecumenical Council, in 381 or 383.*Synod of Constantinople , a local council which condemned Origen....
declared that infanticide was homicide, and in 589 AD the Third Council of Toledo
Third Council of Toledo
The Third Council of Toledo marks the entry of Catholic Christianity into the rule of Visigothic Spain, and the introduction into Western Christianity of the filioque clause...
took measures against the Spanish custom of killing their own children.
There is one debated example of child killing in Old Testament, Jephthah’s Vow. Biblical scholars disagree as to whether Jephthah's daughter was actually sacrificed, or merely dedicated to a life of chaste service.
Middle Ages
Whereas theologians and clerics preached sparing their lives, newborn abandonment continued as registered in both the literature record and in legal documents. According to William L. LangerWilliam L. Langer
William Leonard Langer was the chair of the history department at Harvard University and the World War II volunteer head of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services...
, exposure in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
"was practiced on gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference". At the end of the 12th century, notes Richard Trexler
Richard Trexler
Richard Trexler was a professor of History at the Binghamton University, State University of New York. A specialist of the Renaissance, Reformation, Italy and Behaviorist History, Trexler had over fifty published works. He was best known for revolutionizing the field of public life as...
, Roman women threw their newborns into the Tiber river in daylight.
Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn. In Gotland
Gotland
Gotland is a county, province, municipality and diocese of Sweden; it is Sweden's largest island and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. At 3,140 square kilometers in area, the region makes up less than one percent of Sweden's total land area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, children were also sacrificed.
In the High Middle Ages, abandoning unwanted children finally eclipsed infanticide. Unwanted children were left at the door of church or abbey, and the clergy was assumed to take care of their upbringing. This practice also saw the birth of the first orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
s.
Arabia
The pre-Islamic ArabiaPre-Islamic Arabia
Pre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabic civilization which existed in the Arabian Plate before the rise of Islam in the 630s. The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as it provides the context for the development of Islam.-Studies:...
n society practiced infanticide as a form of "post-partum birth control". Regarding the prevalence of this practice, we know it was "common enough among the pre-Islamic Arabs to be assigned a specific term, waʾd". Infanticide was practiced either out of destitution (thus practiced on males and females alike), or as sacrifices to gods, or as "disappointment and fear of social disgrace felt by a father upon the birth of a daughter".
Some authors believe that there is little evidence that infanticide was prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a land mass situated north-east of Africa. Also known as Arabia or the Arabian subcontinent, it is the world's largest peninsula and covers 3,237,500 km2...
or early Muslim history
Muslim history
Muslim history is the history of Muslim people. In the history of Islam the followers of the religion of Islam have impacted political history, economic history, and military history...
, except for the case of the Tamim tribe
Banu Tamim
Banī Tamīm Tamim is one of the largest of all Arab tribes. Their history goes back to pre-Islamic times....
, who practiced it during severe famine. 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.
Infanticide is explicitly prohibited by the Qur'an. "And do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves too; surely to kill them is a great wrong."
The Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
rejected the practice of infanticide. Together with polytheism
Polytheism
Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities also usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own mythologies and rituals....
and homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
, infanticide was regarded as a grave sin (see and ). Infanticide is also implicitly denounced in the story of Pharaoh's slaughter of the male children of Israelites (see ; ; ; ; ;).
Russia
In RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, infanticide may have been practiced as human sacrifice, as part of the pagan cult of Perun
Perun
In Slavic mythology, Perun is the highest god of the pantheon and the god of thunder and lightning. His other attributes were the fire, mountains, the oak, iris, eagle, firmament , horses and carts, weapons and war...
. Ibn Fadlan describes sacrificial practices at the time of his trip to Russia in 921-922 CE, and describes an incident of a woman voluntarily sacrificing her life as part of a funeral rite for a prominent leader, but makes no mention of infanticide. (It is, however, debatable whether Ibn Fadlan actually visited Russians; his hosts, referred by his writings as Rus
Rus (name)
Originally, the name Rus referred to the people, the region, and the medieval states of the Rus' Khaganate and Kievan Rus' polities...
, may have been Viking
Viking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
s.) The Primary Chronicle
Primary Chronicle
The Primary Chronicle , Ruthenian Primary Chronicle or Russian Primary Chronicle, is a history of Kievan Rus' from about 850 to 1110, originally compiled in Kiev about 1113.- Three editions :...
, one of the most important literary sources concerning Russian history before the 12th century, indicates that human sacrifice to idols may have been introduced by Vladimir the Great in 980 CE. The same Vladimir the Great formally converted Russia into Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
just 8 years later, but pagan cults continued to be practiced clandestinely in remote areas as late as the 13th century.
In Kamchatka
Kamchatka Peninsula
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of . It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west...
, babies were killed and thrown to the dogs. American explorer George Kennan
George Kennan (explorer)
George Kennan was an American explorer noted for his travels in the Kamchatka and Caucasus regions of the Russian Empire. He was a cousin twice removed of diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, with whom he shared his birthday....
noted that among the Koryaks
Koryaks
Koryaks are an indigenous people of Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East, who inhabit the coastlands of the Bering Sea to the south of the Anadyr basin and the country to the immediate north of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the southernmost limit of their range being Tigilsk. They are akin to the...
, a Mongoloid people of north-eastern Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, infanticide was still common in the 19th century. One of the twins was always sacrificed.
China
Marco PoloMarco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
, the famed explorer, saw newborns exposed in Manzi. China's society practiced sex selective infanticide. 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
Hakka people
The Hakka , sometimes Hakka Han, are Han Chinese who speak the Hakka language and have links to the provincial areas of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Fujian in China....
, and in Yunnan
Yunnan
Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...
, Anhwei, Szechwan, Jiangxi
Jiangxi
' is a southern province in the People's Republic of China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to...
and Fukien a method of killing the baby was to put her into a bucket of cold water, which was called "baby water".
Infanticide was known in China as early as the 3rd century BCE, and, by the time of the Song Dynasty
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
(960-1279 CE), it was widespread in some provinces. Buddhist belief in transmigration allowed poor residents of the country to kill their newborn children if they felt unable to care for them, hoping that they would be reborn in better circumstances. Furthermore, the Chinese did not consider newborn children fully "human", and saw "life" beginning at some point after the sixth month after birth.
Contemporary writers from the Song Dynasty note that, in Hubei
Hubei
' Hupeh) is a province in Central China. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Lake Dongting...
and Fujian
Fujian
' , formerly romanised as Fukien or Huguing or Foukien, is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, and Guangdong to the south. Taiwan lies to the east, across the Taiwan Strait...
provinces, residents would only keep three sons and two daughters (among poor farmers, two sons and one daughter), and kill all babies beyond that number at birth. Initially the gender of the child was only one factor to consider. By the time of the Ming Dynasty, however (1368–1644), male infanticide was becoming increasingly uncommon. The prevalence of female infanticide remained high much longer. The magnitude of this practice is subject to some dispute; however, one commonly quoted estimate is that, by late Qing
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
, between one fifth and one quarter of all newborn girls, across the entire social spectrum, were victims of infanticide. If one includes excess mortality among female children under 10 (ascribed to gender-differential neglect), the share of victims rises to one third.
Japan
Since feudal JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
the common slang for infanticide was "mabiki" (間引き) which means to pull plants from an overcrowded garden. A typical method in Japan was smothering through wet paper on the baby's mouth and nose. Mabiki persisted in the 19th century and early 20th century.
South Asia
Female infanticide of newborn girls was systematic in feudatory Rajputs in South AsiaSouth Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
for illegitimate female children during the Middle Ages. According to Firishta
Firishta
Firishta or Ferishta, full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah , was born in 1560 and died in 1620 and he was a Persian historian. The name Firishta means angel or one who is sent in Persian.-Life:...
, as soon as the illegitimate female child was born she was held "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
Nagar, Bangladesh
Nagar, Bangladesh may refer to:* Nagar, Rajshahi Division* Nagar, Barisal Division...
, Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, Miazed, Kalowries in India inhabitants, and also among the Sindh
Sindh
Sindh historically referred to as Ba'ab-ul-Islam , is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically is home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the "Mehran". Though Muslims form the largest religious group in Sindh, a good number of Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus can...
in British India.
It was not uncommon that parents threw a child to the sharks in the Ganges River
Ganges River
The Ganges or Ganga, , is a trans-boundary river of India and Bangladesh. The river rises in the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and flows south and east through the Gangetic Plain of North India into Bangladesh, where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. By discharge it...
as a sacrificial offering. The British colonists
Company rule in India
Company rule in India refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent...
were unable to outlaw the custom until the beginnings of the 19th century.
Africa
In AfricaAfrica
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
some children were killed because of fear that they were an evil omen or because they were considered unlucky. Twins were usually put to death in Arebo; as well as by the Nama Hottentots of South West Africa
South West Africa
South-West Africa was the name that was used for the modern day Republic of Namibia during the earlier eras when the territory was controlled by the German Empire and later by South Africa....
; in the Lake Victoria Nyanza
Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was named for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, by John Hanning Speke, the first European to discover this lake....
region; by the Tswana in Portuguese East Africa
Portuguese East Africa
Mozambique or Portuguese East Africa was the common name by which the Portuguese Empire's territorial expansion in East Africa was known across different periods of time...
; among the Ilso and Igbo people
Igbo people
Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...
of Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
; and by the !Kung
!Kung people
The ǃKung, also spelled ǃXun, are a Bushman people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola. They speak the ǃKung language, noted for using click consonants, generally classified as part of the Khoisan language family...
Bushmen
Bushmen
The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...
of the Kalahari Desert
Kalahari Desert
The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending , covering much of Botswana and parts of Namibia and South Africa, as semi-desert, with huge tracts of excellent grazing after good rains. The Kalahari supports more animals and plants than a true desert...
. The Kikuyu, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
's most populous ethnic group, practiced ritual killing of twins. 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.
Australia
According to William D. Rubinstein, "Nineteenth-century European observers of AboriginalIndigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
life in South Australia and Victoria reported that about 30% of Aboriginal infants were killed at birth."
Inuit
There is no agreement about the actual estimates of the frequency of newborn female infanticide in the InuitInuit
The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...
population. Carmel Schrire
Carmel Schrire
Carmel Schrire is a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University.She was born in Cape Town, South Africa and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town , going on to attend the University of Cambridge...
mentions diverse studies ranging from 15-50% to 80%.
Polar Inuks killed the child by throwing him or her into the sea. There is even a legend in Inuit mythology
Inuit mythology
Inuit mythology has many similarities to the religions of other polar regions. Inuit traditional religious practices could be very briefly summarised as a form of shamanism based on animist principles....
, "The Unwanted Child", where a mother throws her child into the fjord
Fjord
Geologically, a fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glacial activity.-Formation:A fjord is formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley by abrasion of the surrounding bedrock. Glacial melting is accompanied by rebound of Earth's crust as the ice...
.
The Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
and the Mahlemuit tribes of Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
exposed the female newborns by first stuffing their mouths with grass before leaving them to die. In Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
the Inuit exposed their babies on the ice and left to die.
Female Inuit infanticide disappeared in the 1930s and 1940s after contact with the Western cultures from the South.
Canada
The Handbook of North American IndiansHandbook of North American Indians
The Handbook of North American Indians is a monographic series of edited scholarly and reference volumes in Americanist studies, published by the Smithsonian Institution beginning in 1978. To date, fifteen volumes have been published...
reports infanticide and cannibalism among the Dene
Dene
The Dene are an aboriginal group of First Nations who live in the northern boreal and Arctic regions of Canada. The Dené speak Northern Athabaskan languages. Dene is the common Athabaskan word for "people" . The term "Dene" has two usages...
Indians and those of the Mackenzie Mountains
Mackenzie Mountains
The Mackenzie Mountains are a mountain range forming part of the Yukon-Northwest Territories boundary between the Liard and Peel rivers. The range is named in honour of Canada's second Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie. Nahanni National Park Reserve is in the Mackenzie Mountains.The Mackenzie...
.
Native Americans
In the Eastern ShoshoneShoshone
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
there was a scarcity of Indian women as a result of female infanticide. For the Maidu
Maidu
The Maidu are a group of Native Americans who live in Northern California. They reside in the central Sierra Nevada, in the drainage area of the Feather and American Rivers...
native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
twins were so dangerous that they not only killed them, but the mother as well. In the region known today as southern Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, 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 VeracruzVeracruz
Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...
coast, they came across a temple dedicated to Tezcatlipoca
Tezcatlipoca
Tezcatlipoca was a central deity in Aztec religion. One of the four sons of Ometeotl, he is associated with a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, the night winds, hurricanes, the north, the earth, obsidian, enmity, discord, rulership, divination, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty,...
. "That day they had sacrificed two boys, cutting open their chests and offering their blood and hearts to that accursed idol". In The Conquest of New Spain
The Conquest of New Spain
Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España is the first-person narrative of Bernal Díaz del Castillo , the 16th-century military adventurer, conquistador, and colonist settler, who served in three Mexican expeditions; that of Francisco Hernández de Córdoba to the Yucatán peninsula; the...
Díaz describes more child sacrifices in the towns before the Spaniards reached the large Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
city Tenochtitlan.
South America
Although academic data of infanticides among the indigenous people in South AmericaSouth America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
is not as abundant as that of North America, the estimates seem to be similar.
Brazil
The Tapirapé indigenous people of BrazilBrazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
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
Bororo people
The Bororo or Bororo-Boe people live in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil; they also extended into Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Goiás. The Western Bororo, now extinct, lived around the Jauru and Cabaçal rivers...
killed all the newborns that did not appear healthy enough. Infanticide is also documented in the case of the Korubo
Korubo
Korubo or Korubu is the name given to a tribe of indigenous people living in the Javari Valley, in the Western Amazon Basin. The group calls themselves 'Dslala', and in Portuguese they are referred to as caceteiros...
people in the Amazon
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
.
Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia
While Capacocha was practiced in the PeruPeru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
vian 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. The Abipones, a small tribe of Guaycuran stock, of about 5,000 by the end of the 18th century in Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
, practiced systematic infanticide; with never more than two children being reared in one family. The machigenga killed their disabled children. Infanticide among the Chaco
Chaco (tribe)
The Chaco tribe is a native American tribe in Paraguay who built complex stone edifices that aligned with solar and lunar trajectories. The Chaco had no written language and so all knowledge required for building their structures had to be passed by word of mouth over many generations...
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 Ayoreo in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
and Paraguay that it persisted until the late 20th century.
Modern times
Infanticide has become less common in the Western worldWestern world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
. The frequency has been estimated to be approximately 1 in 3000-5000 children of all ages and 2.1 per 100,000 newborns per year. It is thought that infanticide today continues at a much higher rate in areas of extremely high poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
and overpopulation
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
, such as parts of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Female infants, then and even now, are particularly vulnerable, a factor in sex-selective infanticide.
Africa
In spite of the fact that it is illegal, in BeninBenin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
, West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
, parents secretly continue with infanticidal customs.
China
There have been some accusations that infanticide occurs in the People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
due to the one-child policy
One-child policy
The one-child policy refers to the one-child limitation applying to a minority of families in the population control policy of the People's Republic of China . The Chinese government refers to it under the official translation of family planning policy...
. In the 1990s, a certain stretch of the Yangtze River
Yangtze River
The Yangtze, Yangzi or Cháng Jiāng is the longest river in Asia, and the third-longest in the world. It flows for from the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai eastward across southwest, central and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai. It is also one of the...
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
Missing women of Asia
The phenomenon of the missing women of Asia is a shortfall in the number of women in Asia relative to the number that would be expected if there was no sex-selective abortion or female infanticide or if the newborn of both sexes received similar levels of health care and nutrition.The phenomenon...
, but this can partially be explained by sex selective abortion. The illegal use of ultrasound
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is thus not separated from "normal" sound based on differences in physical properties, only the fact that humans cannot hear it. Although this limit varies from person to person, it is...
is widespread in China, and itinerant sonographers with plain vans in parking lots offer inexpensive sonographs to determine the sex of a fetus. Recent studies suggest that over 40 million girls and women are 'missing' in China (Klasen and Wink 2003).
India
The practice has continued in some rural areas of India. Infanticide is illegal in India.According to a recent report by the United Nations Children's Fund
United Nations Children's Fund
United Nations Children's Fund was created by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946, to provide emergency food and healthcare to children in countries that had been devastated by World War II...
(UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing
Missing women of Asia
The phenomenon of the missing women of Asia is a shortfall in the number of women in Asia relative to the number that would be expected if there was no sex-selective abortion or female infanticide or if the newborn of both sexes received similar levels of health care and nutrition.The phenomenon...
in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
's population as a result of systematic sex discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
. The UNICEF study has been criticized by the Indian Medical Association for utilizing outdated data and for deliberately demonizing Indians for the purposes of politics
Pakistan
Killings of newborn babies has been on the rise in PakistanPakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, corresponding to an increase in poverty across the country. More than 1,000 infants, mostly girls, have been killed or abandoned to die in Pakistan in 2009 according a Pakistani charity organization. Infanticide of girls in Pakistan is attributed to a patriarchal society where women are less valued than men.
The Edhi Foundation
Edhi Foundation
The Edhi Foundation is a non-profit social welfare program in Pakistan, founded by Abdul Sattar Edhi in 1951.Edhi is the head of the organization and his wife Bilquis, a nurse, oversees the maternity and adoption services of the foundation. Its headquarters are in Karachi, Pakistan.The Edhi...
found 1,210 dead babies in 2010. Many more are abandoned and left at the doorsteps of mosques. As a result Edhi centers feature signs "Do not murder, lay them here.". Though female infanticide is punishable by life in prison, such crimes are rarely prosecuted.
Oceania
In November 2008 it was reported that in Agibu and Amosa villages of Gimi region of Eastern HighlandsEastern Highlands (Papua New Guinea)
Eastern Highlands is a highlands province of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital is Goroka. The province covers an area of 11,200 km², and has a population of 432,972 . The province shares a common administrative boundary with Madang, Morobe and Gulf and Simbu Provinces...
province of Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
where tribal fighting in the region of Gimi has been going on since 1986 (many of the clashes arising over claims of sorcery
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
) women had agreed that if they stopped producing males, allowing only female babies to survive, their tribe's stock of boys would go down and there would be no men in the future to fight. They agreed to have all new-born male babies killed. It is not known how many male babies were killed by being smothered, but it had reportedly happened to all males over a 10 year period and probably was still happening.
England
In England and Wales there were typically 30 to 50 homicides per million children less than 1 year old between 1982 and 1996. The younger the infant, the higher the risk. The rate for children 1 to 5 years was around 10 per million children. The homicide rate of infants less than 1 year is significantly higher than for the general population.North America
The United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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
Filicide
Filicide is the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own son or daughter. The word filicide derives from the Latin words filius meaning "son" or filia meaning daughter and the suffix -cide meaning to kill, murder, or cause death...
), circa 1983. 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. The vast majority of infant deaths in the United States are female babies. Some of the cases that made news were those of Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson
Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson
Amy S. Grossberg delivered a baby at a Comfort Inn in Newark, Delaware, in November 1996, assisted only by her then-boyfriend Brian C. Peterson, who later threw the baby into a dumpster...
, Genene Jones
Genene Jones
Genene Anne Jones is a former pediatric nurse who killed somewhere between 11 and 46 infants and children in her care. She used injections of digoxin, heparin and later succinylcholine to induce medical crises in her patients, with the intention of reviving them afterward in order to receive...
, Marybeth Tinning
Marybeth Tinning
Marybeth Tinning is an American serial killer currently serving a 20 years to life sentence after being convicted of the murder of one of her children. Her case is held to be one of the most extreme cases of Münchausen syndrome by proxy.-Early life:Marybeth Roe was born in Duanesburg, a small town...
, Melissa Drexler
Melissa Drexler
Melissa Drexler , gained infamy for delivering a baby in a restroom stall at her high school prom and putting the body in the trash before returning to the dance. She pled guilty to aggravated manslaughter, and was sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment...
, Dena Schlosser
Dena Schlosser
Dena Schlosser is a Plano, Texas woman who, on November 22, 2004, amputated the arms of her eleven-month-old daughter, Margaret, with a knife. Plano police responded to a 9-1-1 call made by concerned workers at a local day care center who had spoken to Schlosser earlier that day...
and Waneta Hoyt
Waneta Hoyt
Waneta Ethel Hoyt was an American serial killer. She was born in Richford, New York and died at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women....
.
In the United States the infanticide rate during the first hour of life dropped from 1.41 per 100,000 during 1963 to 1972 to 0.44 per 100,000 for 1974 to 1983; the rates during the first month of life also declined, whereas those for older infants rose during this time. The legalization of abortion, which was completed in 1973
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...
, was the most important factor in the decline in neonatal mortality during the period from 1964 to 1977, according to a study by economists associated with the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Child euthanasia
EuthanasiaEuthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
applied to children that are gravely ill or that suffer from significant birth defects is controversial. Some critics have compared child euthanasia to infanticide.
Explanations for the practice
There are various reasons for infanticide. Neonaticide typically has different patterns and causes than for killing of older infants. Traditional neonaticide is often related to economic necessity - inability to provide for the infant.In England and the United States, Older infants are typically killed for reasons related to child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
, domestic violence
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...
or mental illness. For infants older than one day, younger infants are more at risk, and boys are more at risk than girls. Risk factors for the parent include: Family history of violence, violence in current relationship, history of abuse or neglect of children, and personality disorder and/or depression.
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 dowryDowry
A dowry is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings forth to the marriage. It contrasts with bride price, which is paid to the bride's parents, and dower, which is property settled on the bride herself by the groom at the time of marriage. The same culture may simultaneously practice both...
price. Thus the decision to bring up a boy is more economically rewarding to the parents. However, this does not explain why infanticide would occur equally among rich and poor, nor why it would be as frequent during decadent periods of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
as during earlier, less affluent, periods.
Before the appearance of effective contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
, infanticide was a common occurrence in ancient brothels. Unlike usual infanticide - where historically girls have been more likely to be killed - prostitutes in certain areas preferred to kill their male offspring.
UK 18th and 19th Century
Instances of infanticide in Britain in 18th and 19th century is often attributed to the economic position of the women, with juries committing pious perjuryJury nullification
Jury nullification occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge's instructions as to the law.A jury verdict contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it; however, if a pattern of acquittals develops in response to repeated attempts to...
in many subsequent court cases. The knowledge of the difficulties faced in the 18th century by those women who attempted to keep their children can be seen as reason for juries to show compassion. If the woman chose to keep the child, society was not set up to ease the pressure placed upon the woman, legally, socially or economically.
In mid-18th century Britain there was assistance available for women who were not able to raise their children. The Foundling Hospital opened in 1756 and was able to take in some of the illegitimate children. However, the conditions within the hospital caused Parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
to withdraw funding and the governors to live off of their own incomes. This resulted in a stringent entrance policy, with the committee requiring that the hospital:
'Will not receive a child that is more than a year old, nor the child of a domestic servant, nor any child whose father can be compelled to maintain it'.
Once a mother had admitted her child to the hospital, the hospital did all it could to ensure that the parent and child were not re-united.
Macfarlane argues in Illegitimacy and Illegitimates in Britain (1980) that English society greatly concerned itself with the burden that a bastard child places upon its communities and had gone to some lengths to ensure that the father of the child is identified in order to maintain its wellbeing. Assistance could be gained through maintenance payments from the father, however, this was capped ‘at a miserable 2s and 6d a week’. If the father got into arrears with the payments he could only be asked ‘to pay a maximum of 13 weeks arrears’.
Despite the accusations of some that women were getting a free hand-out there is evidence that many women were far from receiving adequate assistance from their parish. ‘Within Leeds in 1822 … relief was limited to 1s per week’. Sheffield required women to enter the workhouse
Workhouse
In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
, whereas Halifax gave no relief to the women who required it. The prospect of entering the workhouse was certainly something to be avoided. Lionel Rose quotes Dr Joseph Rogers in Massacre of the Innocents … (1986). Dr Rogers, who was employed by a London workhouse in 1856 stated that conditions in the nursery were ‘wretchedly damp and miserable … [and] … overcrowded with young mothers and their infants’.
The loss of social standing for a servant girl was a particular problem in respect of producing a bastard child as they relied upon a good character reference in order to maintain their job and more importantly, to get a new or better job. In a large number of trials for the crime of infanticide, it is the servant girl that stood accused. The disadvantage of being a servant girl is that they had to live to the social standards of their superiors or risk dismissal and no references. Whereas within other professions, such as in the factory, the relationship between employer and employee was much more anonymous and the mother would be better able to make other provisions, such as employing a minder. The result of the lack of basic social care in Britain in the 18th and 19th century is the numerous accounts in court records of women, particularly servant girls, standing trial for the murder of their child.
Population control
Marvin HarrisMarvin Harris
Marvin Harris was an American anthropologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. A prolific writer, he was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism...
estimated that among Paleolithic hunters 23-50% of newborn children were killed. He argued that the goal was to preserve the 0.001% population growth of that time. He also wrote that female infanticide may be a form of population control
Population control
Human population control is the practice of artificially altering the rate of growth of a human population.Historically, human population control has been implemented by limiting the population's birth rate, usually by government mandate, and has been undertaken as a response to factors including...
. 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 Melanesia
Melanesia
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...
n island of Tikopia
Tikopia
Tikopia is a small and high island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Covering an area of 5 km² , the island is the remnant of an extinct volcano. Its highest point, Mt. Reani, reaches an elevation of 380 m above sea level. Lake Te Roto covers an old volcanic crater which is 80 m...
infanticide was used to keep a stable population in line with its resource base
Carrying capacity
The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment...
. Research by Marvin Harris and William Divale
William Divale
William Tulio Divale is a professor of anthropology at York College, City University of New York in Jamaica, New York, USA.Divale was a past chairman of the Social Sciences Department. He received his PhD degree from the University at Buffalo in 1974. He is the publisher of the.He has received two...
supports this argument, it has been cited as an example of environmental determinism
Environmental determinism
Environmental determinism, also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture...
.
Customs and taboos
In 1888, Lieut. F. Elton reported that Ugi beach people in the Solomon IslandsSolomon Islands
Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...
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. Larry S. Milner, author of Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life, a treatise on infanticide, believes that superstition has always reigned supreme in tribal religion. In chapters 9 through 21 Milner explores diverse customs and taboos as possible causes of infanticide, from punishment and shame to poverty, famine, revenge, depression and insanity and superstitious omens.
Psychological
A minority of academics subscribe to an alternate school of thought, considering the practice as "early infanticidal childrearingEarly infanticidal childrearing
Early infanticidal childrearing is a term used in the study of psychohistory that refers to infanticide in paleolithic, pre-historical, and historical hunter-gatherer tribes or societies. "Early" means early in history or in the cultural development of a society, not to the age of the child....
". They attribute parental infanticidal wishes to massive projection or displacement
Displacement (psychology)
In Freudian psychology, displacement is an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind redirects effects from an object felt to be dangerous or unacceptable to an object felt to be safe or acceptable...
of the parents' unconscious
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
onto the child, because of intergenerational, ancestral abuse by their own parents. Clearly, an infanticidal parent may have multiple motivations, conflicts, emotions, and thoughts about their baby and their relationship with their baby, which are often colored both by their individual psychology, current relational context and attachment history, and, perhaps most saliently, their psychopathology (See also Psychiatric section below) Almeida, Merminod, and Schechter suggest that parents with fantasies, projections, and delusions involving infanticide need to be taken seriously and assessed carefully, whenever possible, by an interdisciplinary team that includes infant mental health specialists or mental health practitioners who have experience in working with parents, children, and families.
Wider effects
In addition to debates over the morality of infanticide itself, there is 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. Conversely, studying societies that practice infanticide Géza RóheimGéza Róheim
Géza Róheim was a Hungarian psychoanalyst and anthropologist. Originally based in Budapest, he is often credited with founding the field of psychoanalytic anthropology, since he was the first psychoanalytically trained anthropologist to do fieldwork...
reported that even infanticidal mothers in New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
, who ate a child, did not affect the personality development of the surviving children; that "these are good mothers who eat their own children". Harris and Divale's work on the relationship between female infanticide and warfare suggests that there are, however, extensive negative effects.
Psychiatric
Postpartum psychosisPostpartum psychosis
Postpartum psychosis is a term that covers a group of mental illnesses with the sudden onset of psychotic symptoms following childbirth. In this group there are at least a dozen organic psychoses, which are described under another heading "organic pre- and postpartum psychoses"...
is also a causative factor of infanticide. Stuart S. Asch, MD, a Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University established the connections between some cases of infanticide and post-partum depression., The books, From Cradle to Grave, and The Death of Innocents, describe selected cases of maternal infanticide and the investigative research of Professor Asch working in concert with the New York City Medical Examiner's Office.
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
American Journal of Psychiatry
The American Journal of Psychiatry is a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering all aspects of psychiatry and the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association. The first volume was issued in 1844, at which time it was known as the American Journal of Insanity...
revealed that 44% of filicidal father
Father
A father, Pop, Dad, or Papa, is defined as a male parent of any type of offspring. The adjective "paternal" refers to father, parallel to "maternal" for mother...
s had a diagnosis of psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
. In addition to postpartum psychosis, dissociative psychopathology and sociopathy have also been found to be associated with neonaticide in some cases
In addition, sever postpartum depression
Postpartum depression
Postpartum depression , also called postnatal depression, is a form of clinical depression which can affect women, and less frequently men, typically after childbirth. Studies report prevalence rates among women from 5% to 25%, but methodological differences among the studies make the actual...
can lead to infanticide.
Genetic
Larry Milner writes in the concluding chapter of his study of infanticide:So with this strata of support, I have concluded that it is 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 factorsGeneticsGenetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
which are determinative of this compulsion.
However, Milner's treatise includes at the same time cultural hypotheses for the practice, and his approach to the subject has been criticized as both scholarly and an idealized view of infanticide.
Sex selection
Sex selectionSex selection
Sex selection is the attempt to control the sex of the offspring to achieve a desired sex. It can be accomplished in several ways, both pre- and post-implantation of an embryo, as well as at birth...
may be one of the contributing factors of infanticide. In the absence of sex-selective abortion
Sex-selective abortion
Sex-selective abortion is the practice of terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the baby. The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common in areas where cultural norms value male children over female children, especially in parts of People's Republic of China, India,...
, sex-selective infanticide can be deduced from very skewed birth statistics. The biologically normal sex ratio for humans at birth is approximately 105 males per 100 females; normal ratios hardly ranging beyond 102-108. When a society has an infant male to female ratio which is significantly
Statistical significance
In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase test of significance was coined by Ronald Fisher....
higher or lower than the biological norm, sex selection can usually be inferred.
England and Wales
In England and WalesEngland and Wales
England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...
, the Infanticide Act 1938 describes the offence of infanticide as one which would otherwise amount to murder (by his/her mother) if the victim was older than 12 months and the mother was not suffering from an imbalance of mind due to the effects of childbirth or lactation. Where a mother who has killed such an infant has been charged with murder rather than infanticide s.1(3) of the Act confirms that a jury has the power to find alternative verdicts of Manslaughter in English law
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
or guilty but insane.
United States
In 2009, TexasTexas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
state representative Jessica Farrar
Jessica Farrar
Jessica Christina Farrar is a United States politician and an incumbent in the Texas House of Representatives. She is currently serving her 9th term as the representative from District 148, located in Houston, TX...
proposed legislation that would define infanticide as a distinct and lesser crime than homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
. Under the terms of the proposed legislation, if jurors concluded that a mother's "judgment was impaired as a result of the effects of giving birth or the effects of lactation following the birth," they would be allowed to convict her of the crime of infanticide, rather than murder. The maximum penalty for infanciticide would be two years in prison. Farrar's introduction of this bill prompted liberal bioethics scholar Jacob M. Appel
Jacob M. Appel
Jacob M. Appel is an American author, bioethicist and social critic. He is best known for his short stories, his work as a playwright, and his writing in the fields of reproductive ethics, organ donation, neuroethics and euthanasia....
to call her "the bravest politician in America."
Prevention
Since infanticide, especially neonaticide, is often a response to an unwanted birth, preventing unwanted pregnancies through improved sex educationSex education
Sex education refers to formal programs of instruction on a wide range of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and...
and increased contraceptive
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
access are advocated as ways of preventing infanticide. Increased use of contraceptives and access to safe legal abortions have greatly reduced neonaticide in many developed nations. Some say that where abortion is illegal, as in Pakistan, infanticide would decline if safer legal abortions were available.
Screening for psychiatric disorders or risk factors, and providing treatment or assistance to those at risk may help prevent infanticide. However in developed world significant proportions of neonaticides that are detected occur in young women who deny their pregnancy, and avoid outside contacts, so they may have limited contact with health care services.
In some areas baby hatch
Baby hatch
A baby hatch is a place where mothers can bring their babies, usually newborn, and leave them anonymously in a safe place to be found and cared for. This kind of arrangement was common in mediaeval times and in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the device was known as a foundling wheel...
es, safe places for a mother to anonymously leave an infant, are offered, in part to reduce the rate of infanticide. In other places, like the United States, safe-haven laws allow mothers to anonymously give infants to designated officials. Typically such babies are put up for adoption, or cared for in orphanages.
In other animals
Although human infanticide has been widely studied, the practice has been observed in many other species of the animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
kingdom since it was first seriously studied by Yukimaru Sugiyama. These include from microscopic rotifer
Rotifer
The rotifers make up a phylum of microscopic and near-microscopic pseudocoelomate animals. They were first described by Rev. John Harris in 1696, and other forms were described by Anton van Leeuwenhoek in 1703...
s and insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s, to fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
, amphibian
Amphibian
Amphibians , are a class of vertebrate animals including animals such as toads, frogs, caecilians, and salamanders. They are characterized as non-amniote ectothermic tetrapods...
s, bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s and mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
s. Infanticide can be practiced by both male
Male
Male refers to the biological sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization...
s and female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
s.
See also
- Baby-farmingBaby-farmingBaby farming was a term used in late-Victorian Era Britain to mean the taking in of an infant or child for payment; if the infant was young, this usually included wet-nursing . Some baby farmers "adopted" children for lump-sum payments, while others cared for infants for periodic payments...
- Child sacrificeChild sacrificeChild sacrifice is the ritualistic killing of children in order to please, propitiate or force a god or supernatural beings in order to achieve a desired result...
- Female perversion
- FilicideFilicideFilicide is the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own son or daughter. The word filicide derives from the Latin words filius meaning "son" or filia meaning daughter and the suffix -cide meaning to kill, murder, or cause death...
- Infant exposureInfant exposureThe motif of infant exposure is a recurring theme in mythology, especially among hero births.Some examples include:* Sargon, King of Agade - Exposed to the river.* Moses - Exposed in a vessel made of reeds on the river.* Karna - Exposed to the river....
- Infant mortalityInfant mortalityInfant mortality is defined as the number of infant deaths per 1000 live births. Traditionally, the most common cause worldwide was dehydration from diarrhea. However, the spreading information about Oral Re-hydration Solution to mothers around the world has decreased the rate of children dying...
- List of countries by infant mortality rate
- La LloronaLa LloronaLa Llorona is a widespread legend in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Central America. Although several variations exist, the basic story tells of a beautiful woman by the name of Maria killing her children by drowning them, in order to be with the man that she loved. When the man rejects her, she kills...
(Mexican legend) - Margaret GarnerMargaret GarnerMargaret Garner was an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America who was notorious - or celebrated - for killing her own daughter rather than allow the child to be returned to slavery. She and her family had escaped in January 1856 across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati, but...
- MedeaMedea (play)Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed...
(EuripidesEuripidesEuripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
' play) - Miyuki IshikawaMiyuki Ishikawawas a Japanese midwife and serial killer who is believed to have murdered many infants with the aid of several accomplices throughout the 1940s. It is estimated that her victims numbered between 85 to 169, however the general estimate is 103...
- The Cruel MotherThe Cruel Mother"The Cruel Mother" is a murder ballad.-Synopsis:A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children in the woods, kills them, and buries them. On her return trip home, she sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and...