Infanticide

Infanticide is the deliberate killing of infants under the age of one year. This restricted definition conceptualizes infanticide as a postnatal abortion procedure rather than as a type of child abuse. Infanticide and abortion are often used as family planning mechanisms, carried out to protect the health of unweaned children, the family economy, or the mother's social standing. Information on the killing of children older than one year is given in this entry only when it pertains to other issues being discussed or when the ages of the victims seem to include infants less than a year old.

In modern societies, where infants are born in hospitals, their birth certificates confer citizenship. However, throughout most of human history, babies were born at home and infanticide was a private action done by family members. For this reason, reports about infanticide are often absent or inaccurate, particularly in places having laws against the act.

A number of authors infer infanticide from family size and female infanticide from sex ratios. These indirect measures have been criticized because small family size may result from long postpartum sex taboos, high child mortality, selling unwanted children, or giving them up for adoption. Skewed sex ratios may result from neglect of daughters or underreporting females to census takers.

Prevalence

Marvin Harris (1977) calls infanticide the most widely used method of population control during much of human history. Infanticide, like abortion, seems to occur in virtually all contemporary tribal societies, although the frequency of infanticide varies considerably. The practice has been described in hunter-gatherer, horticulturist, and agrarian societies (Dickemann 1975), as well as among Australian Aborigines (Cowlishaw 1978) and Eskimos (Chapman 1980). It is relatively infrequent in Africa, probably because of the value of large families to agricultural and pastoral people and the high infant mortality rates (Williamson 1978).

Infanticide has been documented in the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Israel, China, and Western Europe. Infanticide, particularly female infanticide, was common among the classical Greeks and Romans. Spartans exposed unfit infants of both sexes. Infanticide was so common in Greece and Rome that the average family was small and seldom had more than one daughter (Boswell 1988).

Infanticide and infant abandonment occurred throughout Europe, despite Christian prohibitions against it. Its frequency increased during the Black Death plague in the fourteenth century and became a widespread problem in the eighteenth century, an age of rapid population growth. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, servants were not permitted to marry or have children, forcing many servant girls to kill or abandon their infants, who were often fathered by their masters. In nineteenth-century Europe and in other technologically advanced nations, the introduction of the condom and increased public concern for children began to decrease infanticide rates (Boswell 1988; Langer 1974).

In most twentieth-century nations, the increase of adoption, the spread of contraception, and the legalization of abortion, allowing for safe abortions under medical supervision, increasingly have made infanticide an unnecessary and outdated method of birth control.

Time of Occurrence

Infanticide is usually carried out at birth or in the first month, before the performance of the infant's birth ceremony. These ceremonies, which incorporate the infants into their kin groups and give them identity and legal status, often take place between the second and fourth weeks and may be delayed if the infant is sickly. In some societies, infants are not considered human or members of the family and community until after their birth ceremonies. The performance of infanticide before the birth ceremony indicates that it is conceptualized as a postnatal abortion (Daly and Wilson 1984; Minturn 1989a, 1989b).

In the sample studied by Leigh Minturn and Jerry Stashak (1982), infanticide was performed by mothers or midwives in 79 percent of societies and by fathers or other men in only 15 percent. Birth ceremonies, on the other hand, were performed by fathers and other men in 69 percent and by women only in 22 percent of the societies, with adults of both sexes participating in the ceremony for the remaining societies. These results suggest that unwanted newborns are killed by women before they are presented to the lawgiving men for the birth ceremonies.

Methods

Infanticide is sometimes done quickly by strangling, crushing the skull, smothering, or poisoning. Other common methods of infanticide include exposure, abandonment, and overlaying.

Exposure. Exposure relieves parents and midwives of the responsibility of actually killing infants. The exposed infant is placed somewhere away from the community where the elements or animals will kill it. The prevalence of legends about the survival and subsequent good fortune of exposed infants (Moses, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus, Tom Jones) suggests that this method reduced the guilt of child killing. A singular modern exception to distant exposure occurs in modern hospitals, where legal constraints prohibit any method of killing a seriously handicapped infant except via the withholding of food and water, which amounts to exposing the infant in the presence of his or her caregivers (Lund 1985).

Urban exposure. Urban exposure of infants was common throughout Europe until the nineteenth century. In medieval Europe, infants were left in the streets, on trash heaps, and at church steps. European urban exposure became most frequent during the eighteenth century, when numerous poor women abandoned infants in streets or foundling homes and Parisian garbage collectors picked up abandoned infants on their rounds. However, urban exposure was not confined to Europe. During the seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries to China found that babies were thrown into the streets and collected with the trash (Boswell 1988; Langer 1974).

Foundling homes. Public outrage over urban exposure of infants led to the establishment of foundling homes in Europe. The mortality rates of infants in these homes was as high as 90 percent. Wet nurses employed in foundling homes neglected infants and sometimes killed them so frequently that they were called "killer nurses" or "angel makers." In effect, consigning infants to these homes amounted to institutionalized urban exposure. Foundling homes allowed parents to abandon unwanted infants without fear of prosecution. As this practice became openly acceptable in the eighteenth century, attitudes toward outright infanticide became more lenient (Boswell 1988; Breiner 1990; Langer 1974). Foundling homes proved to be so ineffectual that, in the late nineteenth century, France and Britain passed laws requiring them to be licensed. Government support for unwed mothers began to replace foundling homes and orphanages in a number of countries (Langer 1974).

Overlaying. Infant death by overlaying—the accidental smothering of a baby by rolling over on it in bed—was common in Europe from the early Middle Ages through the nineteenth century. It is not always clear from the records whether overlaying occurred before or after birth ceremonies, but most overlay victims seem to have been less than one year old. Overlaying was recognized in law and religion. Sleeping with infants was discouraged and sometimes illegal (Kellum 1974). It has been suggested that some overlaying deaths in nineteenth-century England were due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which is related to nutritional tetany, and that the upper classes blamed such deaths on overlaying to disassociate themselves from the poor (Hansen 1979). Ethnographies report numerous societies where mothers or both parents routinely sleep with infants, often with older children in the bed, but do not report overlaying. It seems that this belief was, in large part, a legal fiction that allowed infanticide deaths to be declared accidental.

Vctims of Infanticide

Two studies of folk and tribal societies drawn from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University report similar results to each other (Daly and Wilson 1984; Minturn and Stashak 1982). The most frequently killed infants are illegitimate (57%, 53%); weak or deformed (60%, 53%); twins and triplets (40%, 40%); or excess because of family size or circumstances of birth spacing (31%, 23%). Minturn and Stashak (1982) also found infants are killed because they are the results of abnormal births (20%); unwanted, usually because the mothers are too old or too young to raise children (27%); or females (17%).

Comparison of these results with those of a study done by George Devereux (1976) of abortion in tribal societies indicates that the victims of abortion and infanticide are the same types of infants, not surprising since the motive in both is the elimination of unwanted infants.

Infrequently, ethnographers report infanticide because of incest, kinship considerations, quarrels between parents, sacrifice, or war (Daly and Wilson 1984; Williamson 1978).

Female Infanticide

Female infanticide is the only type of infanticide still widely practiced. Female infanticide at birth and indirect female infanticide through neglect are still widespread in Third World countries.

Ethnographic reports of female infanticide, however, are relatively rare. Minturn and Stashak (1982) report it in 17 percent of their societies, Martin King Whyte (1978) in only 6 percent. Female infanticide has also been estimated from sex ratios, with a note that some societies reporting the absence of this custom have suspiciously skewed sex ratios favoring boys (Divale and Harris 1976). When reporting twin infanticides, ethnographers often note that if only one twin of a dual-sex pair is kept, it is usually the boy (Granzberg 1973).

In India and China, this custom of female infanticide dates back centuries. Female infanticide in India is most common in the northwestern states (Miller 1981; Minturn 1993), but it has also been reported for groups in the south. The poverty of China's peasants and its frequent famines are two reasons for female infanticide. In both India and China, female infanticide is increasingly being replaced by female feticide after amniocentesis to determine fetal sex. The one-child policy of Communist China and the two-child policy of India have increased the prevalence of sons ( Jefferey, Jefferey, and Lyon 1984).

Theories

Sarah B. Hrdy and Glenn Hausfater (1984) cite five functional categories of reasons for infanticide in animals in general: (1) exploitation of the infant as a resource, usually cannibalism; (2) competition for resources; (3) sexual selection; (4) parental increase of their own lifetime reproductive success by eliminating particular offspring; and (5) social pathology. Human infanticide includes examples of all of these functions (Daly and Wilson 1984; Dickemann 1984; Hrdy and Hausfater 1984; Scrimshaw 1984).

Resource competition is a popular theory of human infanticide. The threat of famine has been cited as the explanation for infanticide among Eskimos, Australian Aborigines, and Yanomamö. In Imperial China, Japan, and Europe, infanticide was used to control population and avoid starvation and social disruption. This was especially true for female infanticide, since eliminating females is a much more efficient form of population control than eliminating males.

Other theories of reasons for female infanticide include hypergymous marriage and large dowries (Dickemann 1979); differential values of children for their potential contributions to the parental kin groups (Hughes 1981); and high mortality rate of men in hunting (Riches 1974). The theory that female infanticide is a form of population control in warrior societies (Divale and Harris 1976) has been challenged by several authors who note many flaws in the original study (Fjellman 1979; Hirschfeld, Howe, and Levin 1978; Kang, Horan, and Reis 1979).

Acceptability and Legality

It has been suggested that infanticide and abortion may be underreported in tribal societies because of the presence of missionaries and colonial governments who deem these practices to be illegal (Divale and Harris 1976). Reports of infanticide prosecution by colonial governments are virtually absent in HRAF records. When babies are born at home, infanticide laws are seldom enforceable.

Ethnographic reports of abortion and infanticide are considerably more frequent than reports of punishments for either action, suggesting that tribal law was frequently permissive about both practices. A study of seventy-eight societies found no information on punishment of abortion for sixty-seven of them, and information on punishment of infanticide was so rare that it could not be coded. The absence of punishment may be viewed as recognition of parental rights to dispose of unwanted infants. Some tribal societies explicitly recognize this right until the cord is cut, until after the birth ceremony, or in a few societies, until the infant is weaned (Minturn 1989a).

Although infanticide was a capital offense in many countries for centuries, there is evidence that courts frequently took measures to avoid or mitigate punishment and that a variety of beliefs supported acquittals. In many courts, infanticidal mothers might successfully plead insanity. Eighteenth-century courts greatly extended the scope of the insanity plea by citing, as reason for dismissal of infanticide cases, the belief that pregnancy itself may make women deranged (Boswell 1988). As infanticide became more frequent, courts became more lenient, particularly when defendants were poor, unwed mothers.

Penalties also varied according to the method of killing. In the early Middle Ages, infanticide by exposure, a widespread practice of poor parents, was not a criminal offense. Overlaying was punished by one year on bread and water and two more years without wine or meat. This three-year penance, which became the standard punishment for overlaying, was shorter than the penalty for the accidental killing of adults (Kellum 1974).

Conclusion

There are four ways to avoid conceiving or to eliminate unwanted children: abstinence, contraception, abortion, and infanticide. Although abstinence was and is practiced in some societies by customs of late marriage, postpartum sex taboos, and customary periods of celibacy, it has never prevented all unwanted pregnancies. When these occurred in the past, infanticide was the safest method for disposing of the unwanted children. As medical advancements have been made, however, contraception and abortion have become more widely used and have replaced abstinence and infanticide as forms of birth control.

See also:Abortion; Birth Control: Contraceptive Methods; Birth Control: Sociocultural and Historical Aspects; Child Abuse: Physical Abuse and Neglect; Death and Dying; Euthanasia; Family Planning

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infanticide [Lat.,=child murder], the putting to death of the newborn with the consent of the parent, family, or community. Infanticide often occurs among peoples whose food supply is insecure (e.g., the Chinese and the Eskimo). Female infanticide was common in some traditional patriarchal societies. In certain societies children who are deformed or are believed tainted by evil (e.g., twins) may be slain at birth. In Greece and ancient Rome a child was virtually its father's chattel—e.g., in Roman law, the Patria Potestas granted the father the right to dispose of his offspring as he saw fit. In Sparta the decision was made by a public official. Child sacrifice occurs in many traditional societies for religious reasons, but human sacrificial victims were generally appreciated members of society, unlike victims of infanticide, who were devalued. Christianity, like Islam and Judaism, condemns infanticide as murder, and in all countries the act is a crime. If infanticide served as a means of limiting family size, as many anthropologists believe, then the introduction of contraceptives, abortion, and other methods of population control may have rendered it obsolete.

370. Infanticide

1. Astyanax Hector’s infant son, thrown from the walls of Troy by the Greeks. [Gk. Myth.: Hamilton, 289]
2. Cronos warned that a son would dethrone him, swallowed all his children at birth. [Gk. Myth.: Benét, 237]
3. Sorrel, Hetty leaves her illegitimate infant to die. [Br. Lit.: Eliot Adam Bede ]

Infertility (See BARRENNESS .)

Infidelity (See ADULTERY , CUCKOLDRY, FAITHLESSNESS.)

in·fan·ti·cide / inˈfantiˌsīd/ • n. 1. the crime of a mother killing her child within a year of birth. ∎  the practice in some societies of killing unwanted children soon after birth. 2. a person who kills an infant, esp. their own child. DERIVATIVES: in·fan·ti·cid·al / -ˌfantiˈsīdl/ adj.

infanticide (in-fant-i-syd) n. (in Britain) under the terms of the Infanticide Act 1938, the felony of child destruction by the natural mother within 12 months of birth when the balance of her mind is disturbed because she has not fully recovered from childbirth and/or lactation.

infanticide the killing of a newborn child, which in some societies (as in ancient Greece, by exposure) has in certain circumstances been sanctioned; in law, the crime of a mother killing her child within a year of birth.

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