Infanticide
A frequent method of infanticide in ancient Europe and Asia was simply to abandon the infant, leaving it to die by exposure (i.e., hypothermia, hunger, thirst, or animal attack).
[9] The anthropologist Raymond Dart has interpreted fractures on the skulls of hominid infants (e.g. the Taung Child) as due to deliberate killing followed by cannibalism, but such explanations are by now considered uncertain and possibly wrong.
[10] Children were not necessarily actively killed, but neglect and intentional malnourishment may also have occurred, as proposed by Vicente Lull as an explanation for an apparent surplus of men and the below average height of women in prehistoric Menorca.
[38][39][40]In some periods of Roman history it was traditional for a newborn to be brought to the pater familias, the family patriarch, who would then decide whether the child was to be kept and raised, or left to die by exposure.
[5]: 16 According to William Lecky, exposure in the early Middle Ages, as distinct from other forms of infanticide, "was practiced on a gigantic scale with absolute impunity, noticed by writers with most frigid indifference and, at least in the case of destitute parents, considered a very venial offence".
He found such mores remarkable and commented: "To restrain generation and the increase of children, is esteemed [by the Germans] an abominable sin, as also to kill infants newly born.
[54] Early Christian writers such as Tertullian, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr and Lactantius also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act.
[56] Some authors believe that there is little evidence that infanticide was prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia or early Muslim history, except for the case of the Tamim tribe, who practiced it during severe famine according to Islamic sources.
The same Vladimir the Great formally converted Kiev Rus into Christianity just 8 years later, but pagan cults continued to be practiced clandestinely in remote areas as late as the 13th century.
The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 ended parish relief for unmarried mothers and allowed fathers of illegitimate children to avoid paying for "child support".
By the middle of the century infanticide was common for social reasons, such as illegitimacy, and the introduction of child life insurance additionally encouraged some women to kill their children for gain.
There are a large number of cases of what are called newly-born children, which are found all over England, more especially in London and large towns, abandoned in streets, rivers, on commons, and so on... [A] great deal of that crime is due to what are called lying-in houses, which are not registered, or under the supervision of that sort, where the people who act as midwives constantly, as soon as the child is born, either drop it into a pail of water or smother it with a damp cloth.
Belief in reincarnation allowed poor residents of the country to kill their newborn children if they felt unable to care for them, hoping that they would be reborn in better circumstances.
Furthermore, 18th and 19th century Qing reports of villagers in Liaoning show that they did not consider newborn children fully human, instead regarding life as beginning at some point after the sixth month after birth.
The magnitude of this practice is subject to some dispute; however, one commonly quoted estimate is that, by late Qing, between one fifth and one-quarter of all newborn girls, across the entire social spectrum, were victims of infanticide.
[76][77][78] Scottish physician John Dudgeon, who worked in Peking, China, during the early 20th century said that, "Infanticide does not prevail to the extent so generally believed among us, and in the north, it does not exist at all.
[113] When Russian explorer Otto von Kotzebue visited the Marshall Islands in Micronesia in 1817, he noted that Marshallese families practiced infanticide after the birth of a third child as a form of population planning due to frequent famines.
[169] The result of the lack of basic social care in Britain in the 18th and 19th century is the numerous accounts in court records of women, particularly servant girls, standing trial for the murder of their child.
[180],[181],[182] The books, From Cradle to Grave,[183] and The Death of Innocents,[184] describe selected cases of maternal infanticide and the investigative research of Professor Asch working in concert with the New York City Medical Examiner's Office.
[188] When a society has an infant male to female ratio that is significantly higher or lower than the biological norm, and biased data can be ruled out, sex selection can usually be inferred.
Where a mother who has killed such an infant has been charged with murder rather than infanticide s.1(3) of the Act confirms that a jury has the power to find alternative verdicts of Manslaughter in English law or guilty but insane.
[198] Article 149 of the Penal Code of Poland stipulates that a mother who kills her child in labour, while under the influence of the course of the delivery, is liable to imprisonment for between three months and five years.
[199] Article 200 of the Penal Code of Romania stipulates that the killing of a newborn during the first 24 hours, by the mother who is in a state of mental distress, shall be punished with imprisonment of one to five years.
[200] The previous Romanian Penal Code also defined infanticide (pruncucidere) as a distinct criminal offense, providing for punishment of two to seven years imprisonment,[201] recognizing the fact that a mother's judgment may be impaired immediately after birth.
[204] The MOTHERS Act (Moms Opportunity To access Health, Education, Research and Support), precipitated by the death of a Chicago woman with postpartum psychosis was introduced in 2009.
[207][208] However, with clinical research continuing to demonstrate the large role of rapid neurochemical fluctuation in postpartum psychosis, prevention of infanticide points ever strongly towards psychiatric intervention.
[209] Current diagnostic considerations include symptoms, psychological history, thoughts of self-harm or harming one's children, physical and neurological examination, laboratory testing, substance abuse, and brain imaging.
In other places, like the United States, safe-haven laws allow mothers to anonymously give infants to designated officials; they are frequently located at hospitals and police and fire stations.
[214] According to studies carried out by Kyoto University in primates, including certain types of gorillas and chimpanzees, several conditions favor the tendency to kill their offspring in some species (to be performed only by males), among them are: Nocturnal life, the absence of nest construction, the marked sexual dimorphism in which the male is much larger than the female, the mating in a specific season and the high period of lactation without resumption of the estrus state in the female.
An instance in which a child born on an inauspicious day is to live or die according to the chance of being trampled by cattle (death being likely) is provided by Infanticide in Madagascar, painted by Henry Melville and engraved by J Redaway for Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838 with a poetical illustration and notes by Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
