'Infanticide' is the practice of someone intentionally causing the death of a
infant. Often it is the mother who commits the act, but
criminology recognises various forms of non-maternal
child murder. In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible, whereas in most modern societies the practice is considered
immoral and
criminal. Nonetheless, it still takes place — in the
Western world usually because of the parent's
mental illness or
violent behavior, and in some
poor countries as a form of
population control, sometimes with tacit societal acceptance.
Female infanticide is more common than the
killing of male babies.
In the
UK, the
Infanticide Act defines ''infanticide'' as a specific crime that can only be committed by the mother during the first twelve months of her baby's life. This article deals with the broader notion of infanticide explained above.
Infanticide throughout history
The practice of infanticide has taken many forms.
Child sacrifice to supernatural figures or forces, such as that allegedly practiced in ancient
Carthage, is one form; however, many societies only practiced simple infanticide and regarded child sacrifice as morally repugnant. Critics have argued that child sacrifice was simply infanticide disguised and both driven by the same socio-economic considerations.
[1] Abortion has a similar history.
In Classical times
Judaism prohibits infanticide;
Josephus wrote, "
The Law orders all the offspring to be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus." The ancient
Germanic tribes enforced a similar prohibition. Roman historian
Tacitus found such mores remarkable and commented on both in nearly identical language: ''.. .quemquam ex agnatis necare flagitium habetur.. .'', "[The Germani] hold it shameful to kill any unwanted child" (''
Germania''),
[2] and ''...nam et necare quemquam ex agnatis nefas... putant'', "[The Jews] think it criminal to kill any unwanted child" (''
Histories'')
[3]).
A letter from a Roman citizen to his wife, dating from
1 BC, describes the casual nature with which infanticide was often viewed:
:"Know that I am still in
Alexandria.
[...] I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son, and as soon as I received payment I shall send it up to you. If you are delivered
[before I come home], if it is a boy, keep it, if a girl, discard it." – Naphtali Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule.
[4].
In some periods of
Roman history it was traditional practice for a newborn to be brought to the ''
pater familias'', the family patriarch, who would then decide whether the child was to be kept and raised, or left to death by exposure. The
Twelve Tables of
Roman law obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly deformed. Although infanticide became a
capital offense in Roman law in
AD 374, offenders were rarely if ever prosecuted. A practice described in Roman texts was to smear the breast with opium residue so that a
nursing baby would die with no outward cause.
Christianity
From its earliest days,
Christianity rejected the notion of infanticide. The
Didache prescribed "You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born." So widely accepted was this teaching that
Justin Martyr, in his
Apology, defended the practice of ''not'' exposing children,
[5] and observes that they fear to commit this act of abandonment "lest some of them be not picked up, but die, and we become murderers", which reflects on the difficulty of determining how many exposed children actually died.
The rejection of infanticide spread with Christianity; in ''
Njal's Saga'', the account of how Christianity came to
Iceland concludes with the simultaneous proscription of culturally significant traditions such as pagan worship, the exposure of infants, and the eating of
horsemeat.
[6]
Arabia and Islam
Contrary to popular opinion, there is little evidence that infanticide was prevalent in
pre-Islamic Arabia, except for the case of the
Tamim tribe who practiced it during severe famine
[7] It was explicitly prohibited by the
Qur'an, and
Islamic law forbids killing an unborn baby 'after receiving its soul' (traditionally considered to be at the end of fourth month of pregnancy, also known as "
quickening").
[8]
Methods
One frequent method of infanticide in antiquity was simply to
abandon the infant, leaving it to death by
exposure. In practice and in legend, someone often found the child and raised it for their own purposes, either benignly, as with
Romulus and Remus, or more commonly for
slavery and
prostitution.
[9] Another method commonly used with female children was to severely malnourish them, resulting in a vastly increased risk of death by accident or disease. In some cultures, this is thought to have been an open and accepted practice, while in others it may have been practiced privately, with the passive acceptance of society. On the island of
Tikopia, infanticide was carried out by suffocating the infant.
[10]
Present day
The practice has become less common in the
Western world, but continues today in areas of extremely high
poverty and
overpopulation, such as parts of
China and
India.
[11].
Female infants, then and even now, are particularly vulnerable, a factor in
gendercide.
Explanations for the practice
Economic
Many historians believe the reason to be primarily economic, with more children born than the family is prepared to support. In societies that are
patrilineal and
patrilocal, the family may choose to allow more sons to live and kill some daughters, as the former will support their birth family until they die, whereas the latter will leave economically and geographically to join their husband's family, possibly only after the payment of a burdensome
dowry price. Thus the decision to bring up a boy is more economically rewarding to the parents. However, this 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, more affluent, periods. In times of famine or cases of extreme poverty or other desperate circumstances, parents may have to choose which of their children will live and which will die. (See ''
Sophie's Choice''.)
Population control
Some anthropologists have suggested other causes for infanticide in non-state and non-industrialized societies. Janet Siskind has argued that female infanticide may be a form of
population control in
Amazonian societies. 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. Although additional research by
Marvin Harris and
William Divale supports this argument, it has been criticized as an example of
environmental determinism.
Tikopia, an isolated
South Pacific island, used to practice infanticide to keep a stable population in line with its
resource base.
[12]
Customs and taboos
In 1888, Elton reported that beach people on the island of Ugi in the
Solomon Islands kill 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.
[13]
Other anthropologists have suggested a variety of largely culture-specific reasons for infanticide. In cultures where different value is placed on male and female children,
sex-selective infanticide may be practiced simply to increase the proportion of children of the preferred sex, usually male. (This is linked to the economic reasons above.) In cultures where childbearing is strongly tied to social structures, infants born outside of those structures (
illegitimate children, children of
incest, children of cross-caste relationships, and so forth) may be killed by family members to conceal or atone for the violation of
taboo.
Psychological
A minority of academics subscribe to an alternate school of thought reconsidering the practice as
early infanticidal childrearing. They attribute it, both modern and historical, to psychological inability to raise children.
Contemporary data suggests that modern infanticide is usually brought about by a combination of
postpartum depression and a psychological unreadiness to raise children. It could also be exacerbated by
schizophrenia or
bipolar disorder. It is also attributed, in some cases, to the desire of unwed, underage parents to conceal their sexual relations and/or avoid the responsibility of childrearing.
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. Some anthropologists studying societies that practice infanticide, however, have reported how loving the parents were to their children. (Harris and Divale's work on the relationship between female infanticide and warfare suggests that there are, however, extensive negative effects).
Sex selection
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 is approximately 105 males per 100 females, and the
life expectancy of females is slightly greater than males on average. When a society has an infant male to female ratio which is
significantly higher than the biological norm, sex selection can usually be inferred. However, new research has led to alternate explanations to this theory.
100 million missing women
The idea of there being "100 million missing women", largely in Asia, originated with or was popularised by an influential 1990 essay by
Amartya Sen.
[14] This gender gap may indeed be partly explained by female infanticide and sex-selective abortion. However, recent statistical evidence gathered by Emily Oster suggests that outbreaks of
hepatitis B, which causes female fetuses to miscarry at a higher rate than male fetuses, may account for a large proportion, perhaps up to half, of the "missing" women.
[15].
By country
Infant euthanasia in the Netherlands
In the
Netherlands, euthanasia remains technically illegal for patients under the age of 12. However, Dr.
Eduard Verhagen has documented several cases of infant euthanasia. Together with colleagues and prosecutors, he has developed a protocol to be followed in those cases. Prosecutors will refrain from pressing charges if this ''Groningen protocol'' is followed.
[16][16]
Infant euthanasia in the UK
The
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology (RCOG) has recently recommeded to ''"Allow Active Euthanasia for Disabled Babies, Doctors Urge"''
[18]
that physicians should be allowed to make “deliberate interventions to kill infants” who are
disabled. It has been argued that killing disabled babies will save millions of pounds that otherwise would be required to care for them.
The situation in China
There have been some accusations that infanticide occurs in the
People's Republic of China due to the
one-child policy although most demographers do not believe that the practice is widespread. In the 1990s, a certain stretch of the
Yangtze River was known to be a common site of infanticide by drowning, until government projects made access to it more difficult. Others assert that China has twenty-five million fewer girl children than expected, but sex selective abortion can partially be to blame. The illegal use of
ultrasound is widespread in China, and itinerant sonographers with plain vans in parking lots offer inexpensive sonographs to determine the sex of a fetus.
In other animals
Although human infanticide has been widely studied, the practice has been observed in many other species throughout the
animal kingdom since it was first seriously treated by Sugiyama.
[19] These include microscopic
rotifers,
insects,
fish,
amphibians,
birds and
mammals.
[20] Infanticide can be practiced by both
males and
females.
Infanticide based on sexual competition has the general theme of the killer (often male) becoming the new
sexual partner of the victim's parent which would otherwise be unavailable to it. This represents a gain in
fitness by the killer, and a loss in fitness by the
parent of the offspring killed. This is a form of
sexual conflict and is a type of
evolutionary struggle between the two sexes, in which the victim sex may have its own counter-adaptations which reduce the success of this practice. It may also occur due to non-sexual competition, such as the struggle for food between females. In this case individuals may even kill closely related offspring.
Filial infanticide occurs when a parent kills its own offspring. This often involves consumption of the young themselves, which is termed
filial cannibalism. The behavior is widespread in fishes, and is seen in many terrestrial animals as well, including pigs, where it can be costly to farmers. Unlike humans, most other animals are not seen to practice sex-selective infanticide.
Notes
1. "Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?", Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan/Feb 1984.[1]
2. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Tac.+Ger.+19 19
3. http://tst.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin///ptext?lookup=Tac.+Hist.+5.5 5.5
4. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 744, translated in Naphtali Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 54.[2]
5. "But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution."
6. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/njal100.html
7. H. Lammens, ''Islam. Belief and Institutions'' (London, 1929/1987), pg. 21.
8. ''The Oxford Dictionary of Islam'', p.138
9. Justin Martyr in his ''First Apology'' wrote: "But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution." http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm
10. Diamond, Jared (2005). ''Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed''. ISBN 0-14-303655-6.
11. http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html
12. Diamond, Jared (2005). ''Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed''. ISBN 0-14-303655-6. He devotes a chapter to this aspect of Tikopia
13. Elton, F. (1888) Notes on Natives of the Solomon Islands ''The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland'' '17':90-99.
14. Amartya Sen ''New York Review of Books'' Volume 37, Number 20 · December 20, 1990 "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing"
15. http://www.slate.com/id/2119402/ "The Search for 100 Million Missing Women: An economics detective story." A ''Slate'' article by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, reporting the work of Emily Oster, "Hepatitis B and the Case of the Missing Women", ''Journal of Political Economy'', 113(6): p. 1163-1216 (December 2005)
16.
17.
18.
19. Sugiyama, Y. (1965) On the social change of Hanuman langurs (''Presbytis entellus'') in their natural conditions. ''Primates'' '6':381-417.
20. Hoogland, J. L. (1985) Infanticide in Prairie Dogs: Lactating Females Kill Offspring of Close Kin ''Science'' '230':1037-1040.
See also
★
Child murder
★
Abortion
★
Filicide
★
Eugenics
★
Baby-farming
★ "
Female perversion"
★
Pro-Choice
★
Bruce effect
★
The Cruel Mother
★
Massacre of the Innocents
★
Roe v. Wade
★
Overlaying
Examples of:
★
Damien Thorn'' in ''
★
Melissa Drexler
★
Margaret Garner
★
Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson
★
Moors Murders
★
Gilles de Rais
★
Darlie Routier
★
Diego Santoy
External links
★
Logical Consistency of Infanticide
★
General history of infanticide worldwide
★
An overview of ancient attitudes in the Roman Empire towards the death of children and infanticide
★
Journal of Population Research: Shortage of girls in China today
★
Gendercide watch - Female Infanticide
★
Catholic Encyclopedia on Infanticide
★
"The Gift of a Girl" (1997), documenting efforts in rural South India to change the social tradition of female infanticide
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