Infanticide

In sociology and biology, infanticide is the practice of intentionally causing the death of an infant of a given species by members of the same species. Many past societies permitted certain forms of infanticide, whereas most modern societies consider the practice immoral and illegal. 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 because of tacit societal acceptance.

In the UK, the Infanticide Act defines infanticide as a specific crime committed by the mother only 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 most literate ancient cultures, including those of ancient Greece, Rome, India, China, and Japan. The practice of infanticide has taken many forms such as the child sacrifice to supernatural figures or forces allegedly practiced in ancient Carthage. However, many societies regarded child sacrifice as morally repugnant and did not consider infanticide a religious or spiritual act. 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 .[1] Female infants, then and now, are particularly vulnerable — see female infanticide.

Ancient Jewish practice condemned 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." In Book 5 of his Histories, Tacituswrote of how "all their other customs, which are at once perverse and disgusting, owe their strength to their very badness" and included among them: "It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant."[2]

One frequent method of infanticide in antiquity was simply to abandon the infant, leaving it to death by exposure — or whatever other fate befell it, commonly acknowledged to be slavery and prostitution. 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 Roman 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 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.

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:

"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."

He continued with the observation:

"And again [we fear to expose children], 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.

This spread with Christianity; Njal's Saga, the account of how Christianity came to Iceland, concludes with the simultaneous proscription of pagan worship and exposure of infants (as well as eating horsemeat).[3]

Explanations for the practice

Many historians attribute infanticide primarily to economic factors, especially when a family has more children than it is able 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, more affluent, periods.

A letter from a Roman citizen to his wife, dating from 1 B.C.E., describes the casual nature with which Roman society often viewed infanticide:

"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 Divale 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 suggesting that the causes of infanticide are more complex. 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 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, underage parents to conceal their sexual relations and/or avoid the responsibility of childrearing.

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 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.)

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. 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.

There are 100 million missing women in the world partly due to infanticide. China and India have the highest rates of missing women because of this, although sex-selective abortions are also to blame. Girls are killed because of the low rewards of bringing them up. The dowry price, which can be up to 10 times what an average family in India makes a year, can leave a family in debt. Also when women or girls are married off they will no longer be able to support the family. On the other hand, a boy will support his family until they die, making bringing up a boy much more rewarding.

Sex-selective abortion and infanticide

Sex-selective abortion is the practice of aborting a fetus after determining (usually by ultrasound but also rarely by amniocentesis or another procedure) that the fetus is an undesired sex. Sex-selective infanticide is the practice of infanticide against an infant of an undesired sex. Sex-selective abandonment is the practice of giving an infant of an undesired sex up for adoption.

Family sex selection is most common in societies where a large dowry must be payed on marriage. In these societies, families favor males, as they do not have to pay a dowry on marriage. Some hunter gatherers also practice female infanticide, as males have a higher death rate than females.

Sex-selective abortion was rare before the late 20th century because of the difficulty of determining the sex of the fetus before birth, but the advent of ultrasound has made it much easier. However, prior to this, parents would alter family sex composition through infanticide. Sex-selective abortion is believed to be responsible for at least part of the skewed birth statistics in favor of males in mainland China, India, Taiwan, and South Korea. Although the practice is often illegal, laws against it are extremely difficult to enforce because there is often no practical way to determine the parents' true motivation for seeking an abortion. This also makes the issue a difficult one to study since people almost always keep such information as private as possible.

Prevalence

China

Sex-selective infanticide appears to have been practiced at various times in Chinese history such as the Qing dynasty due to population pressures. Sex-selective infanticide appears to occur infrequently in China today. However, there is a strong imbalance in sex ratios in China as well as Japan, India, and Taiwan, probably the result of sex-selective abortion. In addition, there does appear to be considerable sex-selective abandonment of infants to circumvent China's one child policy.

Female deselection is common in China: Chinese tradition says that most parents want their first child to be born a male. Female deselection is also due to deeply rooted Confucian traditions, and Chinese parents desire sons in order to make familial propagation, security for the elderly, labor provision, and performance of ancestral rites. China calls the female deselection situation the "missing girl" problem.

Parents may wish for a male child because in many cultures only a male will carry on the family name (traditionally when a bride gets married she effectively becomes a member of the groom's family), because they believe that a male is needed for work, or because they wish a male to earn an income needed to support the parents in their old age.

In response to sex-selective abortions, Mainland China has made it illegal for a physician to reveal the sex of a fetus, but female infanticide lingers in China as a result of this law. A non-abortive alternative is sex-selective abandonment, which is also prevalent in China. Most children (about 95 percent of them) in Chinese orphanages are able-bodied girls with living biological parents. These infants were abandoned by their biological parents and sent to orphanages for adoption just because they are female. Many abandoned Chinese girls have been adopted by the westerners and brought to the United States or Canada, while some others have been adopted domestically by childless Chinese couples.

India

The popularity of female deselection in India could be attributed to socioeconomic reasons. There is a belief by certain people in India that female children are inherently less worthy because they leave home and family when they marry. The high number of "dowry deaths" (about 7,000 were reported in India in 2003), in which brides are murdered by their grooms' family members or commit suicide after suffering abuse and neglect, is also a major factor in gender preference.

Studies in India have indicated three factors of female deselection in India, which are the economic utility, sociocultural utility, and religious functions. The factor as to economic utility is that studies indicate that sons are more likely than daughters to provide family farm labor or provide in or for a family business, earn wages, and give old-age support for parents. Upon marriage, a son makes a daughter-in-law an addition and asset to the family providing additional assistance in household work and brings an economic reward through dowry payments, while daughters get married off and merit an economic penalty through dowry charges. The sociocultural utility factor of female deselection is that, as in China, in India's patrilineal and patriarchal system of families is that having at least one son is mandatory in order to continue the familial line, and many sons constitute additional status to families. The final factor of female deselection is the religious functions that only sons are allowed to provide, based on Hindu tradition. Hindu tradition says that sons are mandatory in order to kindle the funeral pyre of their late parents and to assist in the soul salvation.

It is currently illegal to determine the sex of a child during pregnanacy using ultra-sound scans. Laboratories are prohibited to reveal the fetus's sex during such scans. While most established labs comply with the law, determined persons can find a cheaper lab that would tell them what they want. Like the Chinese, the Indians also use the postnatal alternative, which is sex-selective infanticide. Some turn to people called Dais, traditional midwives, historically female, who offer female deselection, letting the baby boys live and killing the baby girls by giving them a sharp jerk, that is, turning them upside-down and snapping their spinal cords, and then declaring them stillborn.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, reported in early 2006 that there may have been close to 10 million female fetuses aborted in India over the past 20 years. This is extrapolated partly on the basis of reduction of female-to-male sex ratio from 945 per 1000 in 1991 to 927 per 1000 in 2001. The female-to-male sex ratio is even lower in cases where a couple has had a previous daughter, but no sons, dropping to 759 to 1000 for the second child if the first was a daughter, and 719 to 1000 for a third child if the first two were both daughters. This article has been challenged by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), which said that it was misleading and failed to take into account restrictions imposed by the courts in 2001. However, some say that the laws have not been effectively upheld, and successful prosecutions remain non-existent. [4] Perhaps contrary to popular expectations, the study also reported that sex selective abortion is more common among the wealthy and among educated women than among the poor and the uneducated. Part of this may be due to their being able to afford the associated expense. In addition, it is what would be expected by evolutionary theory, as a poor male is much less likely to reproduce than a poor female, while the reverse is true for wealthier people, as they have a high probability of attracting multiple females. [5]

Inuit

Historical Inuit demographic studies often show a large child sex imbalance with sometimes nearly two males per female. Most anthropologists attribute this - at least in part - to widespread female deselection in the form of infanticide. Theories suggest that some Inuit families practiced sex-selective infanticide to limit population growth, balance adult population ratios (due to the high mortality rates among adult males), a psychological preference for males, or because sons made a greater contribution to their parents' lives by sharing their hunting produce. [Eric Alden Smith; S. Abigail Smith, Inuit Sex-Ratio Variation: Population Control, Ethnographic Error, or Parental Manipulation?, Current Anthropology Vol.35,No.5(Dec.,1994),pp. 595-624]

Infanticide in other species

Species other than homo sapiens commit infanticide. One perhaps surprising example is the bottlenose dolphin, which has been reported to kill its young through impact injuries[6]. Another example is hamsters eating their young.

Other causes of sex ratio imbalances

Sex-selective abortion, infanticide, and abandonment may not be the only causes of sex ratio imbalances. Work by Emily Oster notes that women infected with the hepatitis B virus are more likely to bear males than uninfected women. Her 2005 publication in The Journal of Political Economy suggests that in the past, the prevalence of hepatitis infection may have accounted for 75% of the sex ratio imbalance in China, 20% to 50% of the imbalance in the Middle East and Egypt but less than 20% of the imbalance in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. As an active area of research, these findings are controversial. Today's concentrations of sex ratio imbalances are regional - in North-West India or East China - and demographic - among women whose first child was a girl - and do not correspond at all to known epidemiological features.

Consequences and ethical debates

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 on the affection and love such parents display toward to their children. (Harris and Divale's work on the relationship between female infanticide and warfare suggests that there are, however, extensive negative effects).

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 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.

Sex-selective abortion and infanticide may make it more difficult for the larger-population gender of that generation to seek heterosexual romantic relationships. It is estimated that by 2020 there could be more than 35 million young 'surplus males' in China and 25 million in India, all of whom will be unable to find girlfriends or wives, assuming that they seek one.

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