Infanticide

Infanticide is the practice of intentionally causing the death of an infant. In many past societies certain forms of infanticide were considered proper, whereas in most modern societies the practice is considered immoral and criminal (but see abortion). Nonetheless, it still takes place, in the West usually because of the mother's mental illness and in some poor countries because of tacit societal acceptance. (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 infant's life. This article deals with the broader notion of infanticide explained above.) == Infanticide in History == Infanticide was common in all well-studied ancient cultures, including those of ancient Greece, Rome, India, China, and Japan. 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. The end of the practice of infanticide in the ancient world coincided with the rise of Christianity as a major religion. The practice was never completely eradicated, however, and even continues today in areas of extremely high poverty and overpopulation, such as parts of India[http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html]. Female infants, then and now, are particularly vulnerable -- see female infanticide. One frequent method of infanticide in antiquity was simply to child abandonment, leaving it to death by exposure. 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. Classic ancient Rome civilization can serve as an example of both aspects. 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 the ''pater familias'' to put to death a child that was visibly deformed. Although infanticide became a capital offense in Roman law in 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. == Explanations for the practice == Many historians believe the reason to be primarily economic, with more children born into families than the family is prepared to support. 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. 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. 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 Devale supports this argument, it has been criticized as an example of environmental determinism. In the Solomon Islands, some people reportedly kill their first-born child as a matter of custom -- and then adopt a child from another island, a practice that suggests that the causes of infanticide are more complex. The Polynesian isolated island of Tikopia is an example of a small society that maintained a stable population over millenia by practising strict reproductive control, including infanticide where it was deemed necessary. It should be noted that infanticide is now forbidden by Section 220 of the Solomon Islands penal code. 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. 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. In some cases, infanticide may have been practiced to eliminate children with birth defects or whose circumstances of birth were deemed unfavorable for religious reasons. The extent of such practices is often widely debated; for instance, academics argue whether infanticide of children with birth defects was a standard practice in ancient Greece, or limited to occasional incidents. It has also been alleged that twins were, in some societies, considered unlucky and thus exposed, though again the extent of such practices is debated. In times of famine or cases of extreme poverty, parents may have to choose which of their children will live and which will starve. A minority of academics subscribe to an alternate school of thought blaming the practice, both modern and historical, on psychological inability to raise children (see early infanticidal childrearing). 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. It is also attributed, in some cases, to the desire of unwed, underaged parents to conceal their sexual relations and/or avoid the responsibility of childrearing. 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). In the absence of sex-selective abortion, sex-selective infanticide can be deduced from very skewed birth statistics. The biologically normal birth ratio for homo sapiens is approximately 106 males per 100 females, and the life expectancy of females is naturally greater than males. When a society has an infant male to female ratio which is statistical significance higher than the biological norm, sex selection can usually be inferred. (However, new research has led to [http://slate.msn.com/id/2119402/ alternate explanations to this theory].) There have been some accusations that infanticide occurs in China due to the one-child policy although most demographers do not believe that the practice is widespread. Others assert that China has twenty-five million fewer girl children than expected. == Infant euthanasia == Joseph Fletcher, founder of situational ethics and a euthanasia proponent, proposed that infanticide be permitted in cases of severe birth defects. He and philosopher Peter Singer have suggested that it is a logical extension of abortion. 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 collegues 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. ==See also== * filicide * abortion * baby-farming * child murder * bruce effect ==External links== * [http://www.cf.ac.uk/hisar/teach/ancthist/projects/children/ An overview of ancient attitudes in the Roman Empire towards the death of children and infanticide] * [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PCG/is_1_21/ai_n6155263 Journal of Population Research: Shortage of girls in China today] Infanticide

Infanticide

How come this article doesnt mention that the Jews were the only ancient people to be opposed to infanticide? (I've never heard the law that if a child dies within thirty days in Judaism its considered a miscarriage.In fact it makes no sence at all because circumcision is performed on the eighth day,meaning the covenant of the child with God is solidified) In many ancient cultures, including those of ancient Greece, Rome, India, China, and Japan, harsh conditions or cultural mores occasionally resulted in the harsh choice to end the lives of newly-born infants. Occasionally? I'm not sure it was as rare as all that. * Alas, you're probably right. I seem to recall that it was standard practice for Roman infants to be brought before the paterfamilias, who would then decide whether the kid was to be exposed or not... but I don't trust my recollection enough to put it in the article. The topic really deserves a thorough discussion - which I don't have the expertise to provide, alas. user:-- April The patriarch of all Jews, Abraham himself, is recorded in Genesis as being ''ordered'' by God to kill his son Isaac. So I don't think the ancient Jews can have been that much opposed to infanticide. Bear in mind that much post-classical writing about the classical era was written by early Christians who regarded all pre-Christian beliefs as heretical and, like the Jews before them (remember the Moloch story?) were eager to paint their enemies as evil beyond measure. --User:Tony_Sidaway_^{_User_talk:Tony_Sidaway#Page_Footer_}">User:Tony Sidaway|User:Tony Sidaway ^{User talk:Tony Sidaway#Page_Footer} 23:06, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC) ---- Something I'd like to integrate into the article somehow: [throughout history, only women took care of children] The problem with having only women raising children is that parenting is an emotionally demanding task, requiring considerable maturity, and throughout history girls have grown up universally despised. When a girl was born, said the Hebrews, "the walls wept."59 Japanese lullabies sang, "If it's a girl, stamp on her."60 In medieval Muslim cultures "a grave used to be prepared, even before delivery, beside the woman's resting place [and] if the new-born was a female she was immediately thrown by her mother into the grave."61 "Blessed is the door out of which goes a dead daughter" was a popular Italian proverb that was meant quite literally.62 Girls from birth have everywhere been considered full of dangerous pollution-the projected hatred of adults-and were therefore more often killed, exposed, abandoned, malnourished, raped and neglected than boys. Girls in traditional societies spent most of their growing up years trying to avoid being raped by their neighbors or employers and thereby being forced into a lives of prostitution. To expect horribly abused girls to magically become mature, loving caretakers when as teenagers they go to live as virtual slaves in a strange family simply goes against the conclusions of every clinical study we have showing the disastrous effects of trauma upon the ability to mother.63 (http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln08_childrearing.html) : The point that childrearing is an emotionally demanding task often left to women who may also have inadequate social and emotional support/resources is an interesting and important point. But it is wrong to state that "Girls from birth have everywhere been considered full of dangerous pollution-the projected hatred of adults-and were therefore more often killed, exposed, abandoned, malnourished, raped and neglected than boys." This is true of many societies but probably not most and most definitely not all. By the way, where do "the Hebrews" say that the walls weep when a girl is born? I am suspicious of the other quotes too, as they are taken out of context -- although I do get the general point, and think it is important. SR 59. Barbara Kaye Greenleaf, Children Through the Ages: A History of Childhood. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978, p. 7. :Funny, this does not look like a Hebrew text. An assertion that "When a girl was born, said the Hebrews, 'the walls wept.'" should be supported by a citation of a Hebrew document. You can look up the citations yourself next time. The context of the quotes doesn't matter. Whether it was literal or figurative, it represents the wishes of people in those time periods. And we know from independent evidence that female children were despised. For example, in ancient Greece, almost no families raised 2 daughters. I'm sure they raised sons though. The evidence is so overwhelming (coming from multiple sources throughout history), that I wonder how you can question the fact. Also you missed one point. Parenting wasn't "often" left to women. It was ''always'' left to women. It's only very recently (this century only), and then only in advanced societies, where parenting is "often" left to women. This point is discussed in detail in the sections preceding the one I quoted above. -- ark Later on, there is a whole section on 'Infanticide as Child Sacrifice' at (http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln08_childrearing.html) Although poverty played some part in this holocaust of children, it is doubtful if it was the main cause of child deaths. In the first place, the cost of bringing up a girl is no more than the cost of bringing up a boy, so the differential infanticide rates are certainly parental choices. When, for instance, Arabs dug a grave next to the birthing place of every new mother so "if the newborn child was a female she could be immediately thrown by her mother into the grave,"105 it was likely hatred of girls, not poverty, that was the motive. Secondly, if scarce resources were the main cause, then wealthy parents should kill less than poor. But the historical record shows exactly the opposite: historical boy/girl ratios are higher among wealthy parents,106 where economic necessity is no problem at all. Even in early modern England, the infant mortality rates for wealthy children were higher than the same rates for ordinary farmers, day laborers and craftsman.107 Thirdly, many wealthy high civilizations such as Greece, Rome, China, India, Hawaii and Tahiti are very infanticidal, especially among their elite classes. As one visitor to Hawaii reported, there probably wasn't a single mother who didn't throw one or more of her children to the sharks.108 There were even societies where virtually all newborn were killed to satisfy their overwhemling infanticidal needs, and infants had to be imported from adjoining groups to continue the society.109 Finally, many nations-like in Japan until recently-kill their children selectively in order to balance out an equal number of boys and girls, a practice called mabiki, or "thinning out" the less promising ones,110 again revealing a quite different motive than the purely economic. It is most certainly not economics that causes so many depressed women on the delivery tables even today to implore their mothers not to kill them after they have given birth.111 Women since the beginning of time have felt that their children "really" belonged to God-a symbol of the grandmother, and that "the child was a gift that God had every right to reclaim."112 When killing her child, therefore, the mother was simply acting as her own mother's avenger. [two more paragraphs, one of them not so relevant, the other very relevant] Opposition by society to infanticide was negligible until modern times. Jews considered any child who died within thirty days after birth, even by violence, to have been a "miscarriage."122 Most ancient societies openly approved of infanticide, and although Roman law, in response to Christianity, made infanticide a capital offense in 374 C.E., no cases have been found punishing it.123 Anglo-Saxons actually considered infanticide a virtue, not a crime, saying, "A child cries when he comes into the world, for he anticipates its wretchedness. It is well for him that he should die...he was placed on a slanting roof [and] if he laughed, he was reared, but if he was frightened and cried, he was thrust out to perish."124 Prosecutions for infanticide before the modern period were rare.125 Even medieval penitentials excused mothers who killed their newborn before feeding them.126 By Puritan times, a few mothers began being hanged for infanticide.127 But even in the nineteenth century it was still "not an uncommon spectacle to see the corpses of infants lying in the streets or on the dunghills of London and other large cities.128 The English at the end of the century had over seven million children enrolled in "burial insurance societies;" with the infant mortality rate at 50 percent, parents could easily collect the insurance by killing their child. As one doctor said, "sudden death in infants is too common a circumstance to be brought before the attention of the coroner...Free medical care for children was refused...'No, thank you, he is in two burial clubs' was a frequent reply to offers of medical assistance for a sick child. Arsenic was a favorite poison..."129 ---- A lot of what this author says is extremely radical and controversial (though that doesn't mean it's any the less authoritative). What I'm quoting is neither radical nor controversial, at least for anyone acquainted with history. Widespread and routine infanticide are very well documented. And certainly, one can't understand ancient history without it. I don't like to quote so extensively but I prefer to do it here than in the article. -- ark Let's be very clear about how "Loving" infanticidal people are towards children. They're not! Anyone who reports them as such is delusional. It's that simple. Now, the proof of this is only slightly more complex. # do the infanticidal parents' touching of the infants differ in any way from a dildo? No. # do the infanticidal parents ''pay attention'' to the needs of the infant or child? Absolutely not. # do the infanticidal parents even look in the eyes of the infant or child? No. From these considerations alone, one must conclude that the anthropologists involved are hallucinating. Or seriously deluding themselves. ------ Why was the section on the Chinese situation redundant. The notion that female infanticide is common in China is common enough that it bears some discussion about why demographers don't think it is common. Which is discussed on the one child policy page. IOW, redundant. ------ Removed this statement....... :Infanticide can be deduced from very skewed birth statistics. The natural male to female birth ratio is slightly below 1:1. And the life expectancy of females is naturally greater than males. When a society has a male to female ratio of 2:1 or 3:1 in children or adults, infanticide is a safe conclusion. There are areas of China and India which have extremely skewed birth rates which are due to sex-selective abortions. Slash and burn fuckers. Then mention abortion damnit! ---- Removed, ''Wetnursing was itself an infanticidal practice since the wetnurse usually killed her own child to leave milk for others'.'' This is a highly dubious claim; I'd like to see where it's supported in the literature. Given non-infanticidal child mortality rates in non-technological societies, the existence of wet-nurses is not in itself evidence of infanticide! In addition, some wet-nurses supported another family's infant and their own newborn simultaneously, though this practice sometimes left one or both infants short of full nutrition. user:-- April, Friday, July 19, 2002 :Are you sure about that last sentence? My understanding is that, in nursing women, milk production increases or decreases according to demand. --user:Stephen Gilbert :To a certain extent, I think it does. We should also consider that, in many cultures with high infant mortality, wet nurses were sometimes mothers who had lost their own infants. Moreover, babies were generally nursed for longer periods in the pre-modern world, so a woman could wean one child and keep the milk flow by taking on another. user:JHK The paragraph talking about infanticide through "killing nurses" is talking about the Victorian era, and excludes (perhaps not explicitly enough) such primitives as "non-technological societies". Additionally, since the high mortality rates in "non-technological" societies are due to infanticide one can hardly use those rates to excuse infanticide! In primitive societies, nursing occurs for the sexual arousal of the mother, not the child's needs. In more advanced societies (say, Victorian era) nursing is considered dirty and foisted off on complete strangers. From Evolution of Childrearing (Chapter 8): The wetnurse herself was usually an infanticidal mother. The common practice was to require that she get rid of her own baby in order to nurse the stranger - termed "a life for a life" by parents in the past.215 Montaigne laments "Every day we snatch children from the arms of their mothers and put our own in their charge for a very small payment."216 Society thought this system fair, since "by the sacrifice of the infant of the poor woman, the offspring of the wealthy will be preserved."217 It is not surprising, then, that wetnurses were universally described as "vicious, slothful and inclined to drunkenness,"218 "debauched, indolent, superstitious,"219 guilty of "gross negligence...leaving babies...unattended when helping with the harvest...crawling or falling into the fire and being attacked by animals, especially pigs,"220 "hung from a nail like a bundle of old clothes...the unfortunate one remains thus crucified [with] a purple face and violently compressed chest."221 The wetnurses' superstitions included a belief "in favor of cradle cap and of human wastes, which were thought to have therapeutic value,"222 so infants were rarely washed and lived in their own feces and urine for their entire time at nurse: "Infants sat in animal and human filth, were suspended on a hook in unchanged swaddling bands or were slung from the rafters in an improvised hammock...their mouths crammed with rotting rags."223 Even live-in wetnurses were described as unfeeling: When he cried she used to shake him-when she washed him she used to stuff the sponge in his little mouth-push her finger (beast!) in his little throat-say she hated the child, wished he were dead-used to let him lie on the floor screaming while she sat quietly by and said screams did not annoy her...224 Complaints by physicians that wetnurses let infants die of simple neglect were legion: "While the women attend to the vineyards, the infant remains alone...swaddled to a board and suspended from a hook on the wall...crying and hungry in putrid diapers. Often the child cries so hard it ends up with a hernia...turkeys peck out the eyes of a child...or they fall into a fire, or drown in pails left carelessly on doorsteps."225 Children were described as being "kept ragged and bare, sickly and starved...in terror of their nurse, who handed out blows and vituperation freely" or who "tied them up by the shoulders and wrists with ragged ends of sheets...face down on the floor...to protect them from injuring themselves while she was away...Never played with or cuddled...it is a holiday when they are taken for a walk around the room by the nurses..."226 Infants who are sent to "killing nurses" are described as being fed while the nurse croons, "Cry no more! Soon you will go, det� drago, soon...'Tis truly better that you go, dear infant...onto the lap of Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus."227 The destructive Mother of Jesus, who gave birth for him to be sacrificed, was never far away from the child. It is no wonder that well into the nineteenth century many areas had a two-thirds mortality rate of infants sent to wetnurse.228 :Problems with this. You're using shoddy scholarship to try to back up an unprovable claim. De Mause provides no analysis or discussion of his sources, merely a catalog of horrific quotes. We cannot tell the context, nor can we take them as representative. THe most they prove is that, in the early modern and modern periods (there's nothing here before the 17th c. I checked the citations), ''some'' wetnurses may have been infanticidal and were most likely abusive. THere is nothing to support your assertions of this type of behavior as a norm or even a trend. Anybody can go through books and pick out quotes (even totally out of context) to make an argument. Since de Mause's work is criminally lax in scholarship, I suggest you try to use better sources. User:JHK Are you also going to accuse Noam Chomsky of being "criminally lax in scholarship" because he doesn't provide full context with his 1000-per book quotes? There are simply too many quotes for it to be possible to provide full context, but then you're not interested in being reasonable, only in defending your position at all costs. -- Ark ---- Just re-read "A Modest Proposal," and could see absolutely nothing that referred to rotting corpses of babies in the streets. The only reference was to children accompanying their mothers begging. This certainly makes me question the veracity of other statements in this article. Moreover, Swift was born at the time of a particularly virulent wave of the plague ... even if there were piles of corpese in his memory, I'd be hard pressed not to wonder if these were not the result of plague or epidemic -- both of which were common in Early Modern cities. Either way, Swift is certainly not Victorian, which is also something the article implied. User:JHK 12:28 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT) My fault for the Swift ref, I took it out. As for "plagues and epidemics", they make a useful cover for infanticide. My impression is the Victorians were infanticidal. It is a reasonable impression (for fuck's sake; Nazi Germany was infanticidal) and unless someone comes up with a specific period when parents stopped being infanticidal, I'll trust my impressions over the protests of some jerk living in denial. I see no reason why I should work harder on this article than my lazy opponents just because the majority of people are idiots similarly living in denial. I am dealing with morons who refuse to accept that incest, infanticide and child abuse have EVER existed despite the massive amounts of evidence to the contrary. So when these morons grudgingly admit that these things ''did'' happen at specific points in time and in specific places, that simply isn't fucking good enough for me. I don't accept the judgement of idiots. So if no one here is reasonably intelligent, educated and open-minded, '''I'll''' say what conclusions can be supported from the evidence (which I don't feel the least need to spell out to you lazy bums). -- Ark ---- Hi Ark, I have only been here at Wikipedia for a few months but I have found most people here to be pretty open minded when confronted with hard evidence. Can you give me a few clues or a summary of what you remember of the evidence so I can search for similar sources online? BTW I would appreciate it if you could keep the obscenities down as my niece and nephew (who are minors) might join me here occasionally for homework research, composition practice, etc. Thanks! user:mirwin ---- http://www.baxleystamps.com/litho/smith_47020225.shtml This might be a useful source. Unfortunately only an outline is available at this link. Chapter 30 addresses infanticide in a region of China. user:mirwin ---- Another fishy thing: In all the imprecations cast against wetnurses, there is no notice taken that Breastfeeding women don't get pregnant and that they can feed more than one infant. ''Which only means they'd have more than one infant they were wetnursing at one time. None of them need be their own. Above all, the milk-production capacity of a woman is finite.'' ---- I took this out until it can be verified, mostly because of my objections raised above. I am very uncomfortable relying on the very questionable work of what appears to be one social scientist -- especially one whose work is not really accepted by the mainstream. User:JHK No, you took it out because you can't accept that infanticide occured so close to the modern era. It makes you uncomfortable that you can't dismiss the entire thing to the grey mists at the dawn of human history. -- Ark :No, Ark -- I am fully aware that we live in a society where people do horrible things to children. I am also aware that this has long been the case. There are plenty of records out there for at least the Victorian area on things like the treatment of children in workhouses, and they clearly indicate widespread abuse of minors and women. I removed what I did because I re-read Swift and the deMause article you used as sources. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a lot of stuff quoted out of context. Some of the sources, like Philippe Ariés, I've read -- he has written brilliant history, well-documented and respected. He's also written psychohistory which is mostly supposition based on scant evidence. If you want things to stay unchallenged, you've got to make sure they have recognizable merit.User:JHK ---- Hi, Ark. Welcome back. Your contribution to this subject has the potential to be very valuable. Also, bear in mind that how you present yourself in the talk pages makes a strong impression on others. We are impressed with solid scholarship, but we also enjoy a cordial atmosphere. You may not be aware that phrases like "you can't accept" or "you can't dismiss" are taken personally. Now, if you and I were talking on the phone (or better, in person), it would be easy for me to perceive the gentle spirit behind the words. But, alas, we get only the bare text here. I myself am very much against infanticide and child abuse, so anything you can do to expose these crimes in the article pages would be welcome to me. Let's discuss what we can each do to help each other make excellent articles on such worthy topics. User:Ed Poor 12:01 Aug 13, 2002 (PDT) ---- Hi Ed, I ran a google.com advanced search on keywords (roman infanticide opium) Wikipedia came up at the top and the other links were pretty weak. http://65.1911encyclopedia.org/I/IN/INFANTICIDE.htm Mentions the method of smearing a mother's breast with opium but cites it as in use among the upper classes of India. No mention of Rome. This makes me wonder if we have introduced an error in this statement: "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." If the Roman texts are describing a practice in India then perhaps we should say so. It would be nice if we had citations for the Roman texts and English translations. user:mirwin ---- Found Lloyd Demause, "Foundations of Psychohistory", online at: http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/p23x41.htm On page 26, "The history of infanticide in the West has yet to be written, and I shall not attempt it here. But enough is already known to establish that, contrary to the usual assumption that it is an Eastern rather than a Western problem, infanticide of both legitimate and illegitimate children was a regular practice of antiquity, that the killing of legitimate children was only slowly reduced during the Middle Ages, and that illegitimate children continued regularly to be killed right up into the nineteenth century.(110)" A lot of references at 110. For someone who is not going to attempt the history "here", he sure manages a lot of gory detail in the next couple of pages. user:mirwin ---- Did you note that most of his primary sources were read in translation, and that most of his secondary sources were from before 1940? Also, most of the primary source examples I've seen from this work are taken as representative of a society, when some of them (for example, the stuff about the dauphin, for instance) may well not have been. One has to remember that some people (Suetonius, for example) wrote to both discredit and to scandalize -- if the population at large were to disapprove, then should we take the reported actions as a norm? This is why I think we need to look beyond deMause for evidence to support Ark's arguments. De Mause is only one of thousands of people writing on child abuse and infanticide. Surely ther must be other contemporary scholars out there? As an historian, I can see great gaping holes in deMause's use of sources. It doesn't make him wrong, but it certainly sets off warning bells -- if the scholarshp doesn't stand up, then are the conclusions he draws really proven? As to the dauphin thing -- if it's what I think it is, it's the primary source for a book by Philippe Ariés -- de Mause has basically taken the same passages (possibly from A's book without reading the whole) and recycled them. IIRC, the dauphin in question was the future Louis XIII. The book also discussed his toilet training in great detail. The problem is, this one record (from an observer, not the main subject) was not only used to draw a complex psychological portrait of the king. Moreover, much of what was said about Louis' childhood was assumed to have been the norm for children of the time -- which is kind of odd, considering that most people looking for social norms do not look at one person -- let alone the person at the top of the social pyramid -- and assume that it's normal. 'nuff said. User:JHK ---- Dr. K, you make some excellent points. I will attempt to keep them in mind as I look for alternate sources to augment our arguments. user:mirwin http://www.trentu.ca/ahb/ahb10/ahb-10-3-4a.html#b31 This is an applicable discussion of 5 primary Greek sources. The author argues strongly that the evidence does not support strong conclusions that infanticide practices involving birth defects were uniform and widespread. On the contrary, the discussion points out many reasons to suspect/conclude that many infants with abnormal development or defects survived to productive adult status. * That's useful for Greek societies, but there are quite a few other cultures involved here. I remember from some folklore classes that in one culture, central African IIRC, twins were regarded as unlucky and were thus usually killed at birth. The "real" answer seems to be that many, many different factors came into play. User:-- April * To counter the argument, the following four references ''cited in that article'' that Mirwin points to support the concept that infanticide of children with birth defect was common in ancient Greece: **D.W. Amundsen, 'Medicine and the Birth of Defective Children: Approaches of the Ancient World', in Euthanasia and the Newborn: Conflicts Regarding Saving Lives, Philosophy and Medicine 24, ed. R. McMillan et al. (Dordrecht 1987) 10, 13 **P. Carrick, Medical Ethics in Antiquity: Philosophical Perspectives on Abortion and Euthanasia (Dordrecht 1985) 102 **E. Eyben, 'Family Planning in Graeco-Roman Antiquity', AncSoc 11/12 (1980/1981) 15, 35 **W.L. Langer, 'Infanticide: A Historical Survey', History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1974) 353-4. *The article itself doesn't argue against defect as a reason for infanticide, just that it did not occur in ''all'' or ''most'' cases. **Agreed. This is a better summary than the one I provided. user:mirwin ---- http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/consci/tag97/infanticide.htm "Determining the sex of infanticide victims from the Late Roman era through ancient DNA analysis" This synopsis describes archeological evidence that infanticide occurred in Rome and in this case was sex and perhaps commerce linked. Again it is a single instance with no way to quantify societal acceptance, practice or trends. user:mirwin ---- http://www.cf.ac.uk/hisar/teach/ancthist/projects/children/ This site looks like a pretty balanced treatment of information from various sources regarding infanticide in the Roman empire. It has translations of quotes from primary sources and some discussion of the societal context. Mixed implications. It also has a bibliography that is somewhat contemporary, ranging from 1966 to 1989. My impression of its overall take is that infanticide occurred routinely and regularly but was not a popular or prevailing trend. It discusses a law that intended to incentivize the ruling class with rapid advancement for more kids, but the kids only had to survive eight or nine days. It also vaguely discusses some attempted epigraphics, demographics, and statistics and provides sources. user:mirwin ---- As an admitted non-expert in the field, what bothers me most about Ark's contribution is the following: (a) His contributions are all taken from the same single source, and that, as JHK points out, is a secondary, not a primary source. That's not background research, that's dogmatic upholding of one author's claims. (b) He has presumed only one explanation for various situations, where several have been proposed, and apparently does not wish any coverage given to opposing views. That's against the NPOV policy. (c) He uses name-calling, baseless accusations, and downright rudeness in dealing with fellow contributors, whose sole fault seems to be editing his articles or objecting to his points. That's against Wikipetiquette. Thus, if Ark feels that his viewpoint is not being adequately represented, I suggest he (a) unearth other sources, preferably primary ones, in its defense; (b) allow space for contrary positions to be included in articles without complaining or removing it; (c) use reasonable courtesy in discussing the proper balance of elements in the article. That is, I think, a more productive approach. ---- Reverted back to a non-babies piled in the streets, wetnursing is infaticidal version until we can actually see some hard evidence. Just some actual sources other than deMause (or something based on deMause). Again, this is not because I don't believe infanticide didn't exist, but that I don't see evidence that it was as normal as was implied. My analogy -- 20-odd people were arrested last week for being part of a pedophile parnography ring. More upsetting to me was the fact that many of these people were the parents of the children being subjected to sexual abuse -- and they were apparently profiting from it financially. Many of these parents were in the US, but some were in other countries. The kind of reasoning so far demonstrated in the article might conclude that more Americans abuse their children in this way than do parents in other countries. Or that parents with access to the internet are more likely to be abusers. Or, considering the large number of abductions, rape, other sexual abuse, and sometimes killings of children present in the news over the past few months, sexual abuse of children is the norm in western society. I can't prove it, of course, but I think that that is probably NOT the case, i.e., it is not the norm, nor is it normative. However, it is certainly something of which we should be aware, and to which we as a society should respond and remedy. That latter, though, is my own opinion, and possibly not appropriate for an article. User:JHK * I am very disturbed by the number of times the phrase "non-Western" is creeping into this discussion. It seems as if someone is trying to argue here that there is a kind of "moral unfitness" of non-Westerners to raise children; an encyclopedia is definitely not the place for such arguments to be made, and it's very far from NPOV. The sad fact is that infanticide has taken place in all cultures, and the prevalence of it has been tied more to the level of technology than to any East/West divide. If "non-technological" is meant, why not use that? User:-- April The problem of aborting females or killing girl babies (in so far as it actually exists) does seem to exist primarily in India and China, see [http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F6081FFD3A5C0C758CDDAC0894D9404482 The World; Modern Asia's Anomaly: The Girls Who Don't Get Born] User:Fredbauder :The abstract only addresses abortion. Perhaps this paragraph should be relocated to abortion. The USA as a whole does not currently consider legal abortions infanticide. I am uncertain regarding prevailing English speaking attitudes. The article already incorporates this minority view by the reference link to abortion in the see also list. user:mirwin ---- From a previous version: :There are well-documented accounts of infanticide performed by hospital personnel in China immediately upon the birth of an out-of-quota child, to enforce the goverment's one child policy. The practice, although required by the government, is not widespread as over-quota mothers usually are forced to have an abortion long before bringing the baby to term. China requires all women of child-bearing age to take pregnancy tests at government clinics every 3 months. If this can be verified (I would accept a New York Times article reporting this) it needs to be in the article. If not official policy then it is simply crime in China. The implication that it is official government policy is not acceptable in the absence of some evidence. I doubt very much any evidence exists. My own hypothesis is that corruption expains any incidents as local officials try illegally to meet centrally issued quotas. User:Fredbauder :The New York Times may be an impractical source. I, for one, do not have a subscription. If multiple others do, then it is obviously very practical. 8) User:Mirwin 18:05 Aug 16, 2002 (PDT) A subscription to current articles is free, although one may also subscribe to a complete copy (including ads, etc) which is not free. The rub is articles more than 2 weeks old which cast $2.95 for the full text, although an abstract is free. BTW look for a piece next week on ABC evening new early next week on female infanticide. UserFredbauder ---- This sentence, from the opening paragraph, is hard to read: :In nearly all past societies certain forms of infanticide were considered proper, whereas in most modern societies the practice is considered immoral and criminal. It seems to be trying to contrast past and present attitudes toward infanticide, saying that it was a lot more acceptable in the past but that it's widely condemned now. Can anyone think of a better, more clear way to express this? --User:Ed Poor ---- Not to be argumentative, but I'd like to see some support that the decline of infanticide was paralleled by the rise in Christianity. That's a pretty strong statement, and given that no statistics are available from those times, it seems to be extremely subjective and non-neutral. User:-- April 21:38 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC) == Wet Nurse Infanticide Question == Seems doubtful to me the only experience of a wet nurse culture in recent times that I personally have is Saudi Arabia where many old Saudi's will refer to their milk brothe. The milk brother is the son of the wet nurse and is regarded as being equivalent to a matrilineal brother. I would have thought that infanticide would only be needed in a nutrition poor society. == Customs == An editor summarized, :''You can't "customarily" kill your firstborn, since you can only do it once.'' regarding this sentence :In the Solomon Islands, some people customarily kill the first-born child -- and then adopt a child from another island, a practice that suggests that the causes of infanticide are more complex. Am not an anthropologist, but aren't customs societal mores rather than personal habits, and aren't many of them performed only once in a lifetime? For example, it is customary in the west for first-time brides to wear white dresses. Cheers, -User:Willmcw 09:53, May 8, 2005 (UTC) Gmaxwell rewrote it to something more appropriate, for which I thank him. I meant that "customarily" generally means "habitually" rather than "according to custom". I didn't think the word was adding much, but it's fair enough to add it as Gmaxwell has. User:Grace Note 06:03, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Infanticide

Murder Infancy

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