Infanticide in Antiquity

1
Infanticide in Antiquity

• Prevalence unknown Risk to females unknown
• Death by exposure or rescued by other families
• Why?
• Not a legal person (naming celebration)
• (High) infant mortality rate (IMR) of deaths
  in the first year of life per 1000 live births
• Very few legal ramifications
• Poverty
• Illegitimate births

2
Infanticide in Antiquity

• Example of ancient Carthaginian society
  (flourished 800-150 B.C.) Practiced child
  sacrifice
• Mass graves found more recently that suggested
  children were sacrificed until 4 years of age
• Why?
• 1st born sons of noble families represented most
  valued possessions
• Considered by Greek states to be more cruel than
  their own practice

3
Contemporary Infanticide Chinas One-child
Policy (1979)

• Context?
• What is the late, long, few policy?
• Was it successful?
• What is the reality following the softening of
  the policy?

4
Contemporary Infanticide Chinas One-child
Policy (1979)

• What are the effects of Chinas one-child policy?
  
• Negative?
• Positive?
• Why is there cultural acceptance?
• What role does media play in promoting cultural
  acceptance?

5
Contemporary Infanticide Peru

• Describe selective neglect or passive infanticide
• Context?
• Child care parenting practices?
• What effect does the division of labor have on
  children?
• Why are children of different ages and gender
  treated differently in rural Andes?
• What are the explanations of passive
  infanticide?

6
Cuyo Cuyo - Peruvian Society

• Historical cultural influences
• Andean reciprocity, mountain deities
• Larpa symptoms
• Urana
• Spanish colonialism/capitalism Catholicism
• Sociological
• Rural agriculturalists yet depend on lengthy
  seasonal migrations to mine for gold (fathers
  away)
• Gender values

7
Cuyo Cuyo - Peruvian Society

• Practices, customs, treatment (FACTS)
• High fertility and mortality
• Haircutting ritual (age 2)
• Economically productive (age 7)
• Response to sickness death in females

8
Contemporary Infanticide India

• What is a dowry?
• How is infanticide practiced in post-colonial
  India?
• How are infanticide and dowry deaths related in
  India?
• Is female infanticide a product of economic
  burden, sexism, neither or both?
• What are some of the solutions proposed?
• What is the role of technological advances?

9
Terms

• Little emperor syndrome only children
  becoming spoiled resulting in behavioral
  problems
• Dowry money, goods, or estate a woman brings to
  her husband in marriage (provided by womans
  family typically) OR a gift of money or property
  by a man to or for his bride
• Selective neglect or passive infanticide
  differentially depriving children of sufficient
  nutrition and/or health care resulting in
  mortality or morbidity