The practice of infanticide has taken many forms over time.
Child sacrifice to supernatural figures or forces, such as that believed to have been practiced in ancient
Carthage, may be only the most notorious example in the
ancient world. 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). On at least one island in
Oceania, infanticide was carried out until the 20th century by suffocating the infant, while in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and in the
Inca Empire it was carried out by sacrifice (see below). A minority of academics subscribe to an alternate school of thought, considering the practice as "
early infanticidal childrearing". They attribute parental infanticidal wishes to massive
projection or
displacement of the parents'
unconscious onto the child, because of intergenerational, ancestral abuse by their own parents. Clearly, an infanticidal parent may have multiple motivations, conflicts, emotions, and thoughts about their baby and their relationship with their baby, which are often colored both by their individual psychology, current relational context and attachment history, and, perhaps most saliently, their psychopathology Almeida, Merminod, and Schechter suggest that parents with fantasies, projections, and delusions involving infanticide need to be taken seriously and assessed carefully, whenever possible, by an interdisciplinary team that includes infant mental health specialists or mental health practitioners who have experience in working with parents, children, and families.
Paleolithic and Neolithic Many Neolithic groups routinely resorted to infanticide in order to control their numbers so that their lands could support them.
Joseph Birdsell believed that infanticide rates in
prehistoric times were between 15% and 50% of the total number of births, while Laila Williamson estimated a lower rate ranging from 15% to 20%. 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. 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.
In ancient history In the New World Archaeologists have uncovered physical evidence of
child sacrifice at several locations.
In the Old World Three thousand bones of young children, with evidence of sacrificial rituals, have been found in
Sardinia.
Pelasgians offered a sacrifice of every tenth child during difficult times. Many remains of children have been found in
Gezer excavations with signs of sacrifice. Child skeletons with the marks of sacrifice have been found also in Egypt dating 950–720 BCE. Child sacrifice was particularly widespread in ancient
Carthage. The
religion of the ancient Egyptians forbade infanticide and during the
Greco-Roman period they rescued abandoned babies from manure heaps, a common method of infanticide by Greeks or Romans, and were allowed to either adopt them as foundling or raise them as slaves, often giving them names such as "copro -" to memorialize their rescue.
Strabo considered it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared.
Diodorus indicates infanticide was a punishable offence. Egypt was heavily dependent on the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate the land and in years of low inundation, severe famine could occur with breakdowns in social order resulting, notably between and . Instances of cannibalism are recorded during these periods, but it is unknown if this happened during the pharaonic era of ancient Egypt. Beatrix Midant-Reynes describes human sacrifice as having occurred at Abydos in the early dynastic period ( ), while
Jan Assmann asserts there is no clear evidence of human sacrifice ever happening in ancient Egypt.
Carthage According to Shelby Brown,
Carthaginians, descendants of the
Phoenicians, sacrificed infants to their gods. Charred bones of hundreds of infants have been found in Carthaginian archaeological sites. One such area harbored as many as 20,000 burial
urns.
Plutarch ( ) mentions the practice, as do
Tertullian,
Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and
Philo. The
Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the
Tophet (from the Hebrew
taph or
toph, to burn) by the
Canaanites. Writing in the ,
Kleitarchos, one of the historians of
Alexander the Great, described that the infants rolled into the flaming pit.
Diodorus Siculus wrote that babies were roasted to death inside the burning pit of the god
Baal Hamon, a bronze statue.
Greece and Rome killing her sons, by
Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix (1862) The historical Greeks considered the practice of adult and child sacrifice
barbarous, however,
infant exposure was widely practiced in
ancient Greece. It was advocated by
Aristotle in the case of
congenital deformity: "As to the exposure of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live." In Greece, the decision to expose a child was typically the father's, although in
Sparta the decision was made by a group of elders. Exposure was the preferred method of disposal, as that act in itself was not considered to be murder; moreover, the exposed child technically had a chance of being rescued by the gods or any passersby. This very situation was a recurring motif in
Greek mythology. The practice was prevalent in
ancient Rome, as well.
Philo was the first known philosopher to speak out against it. A letter from a Roman citizen to his sister, or a pregnant wife from her husband, dating from , demonstrates the casual nature with which infanticide was often viewed: by
Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 1860 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. The
Twelve Tables of
Roman law obliged him to put to death a child that was visibly
deformed. The concurrent practices of
slavery and infanticide contributed to the "background noise" of the
crises during the Republic. According to mythology,
Romulus and Remus, twin infant sons of the war god
Mars, survived near-infanticide after being tossed into the
Tiber River. According to the myth, they were raised by wolves, and later founded the city of
Rome.
Middle Ages Whereas
theologians and
clerics preached sparing their lives, newborn abandonment continued as registered in both the literature record and in legal documents. However the first
foundling house in Europe was established in
Milan in 787 on account of the high number of infanticides and
out-of-wedlock births. The
Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Rome was founded by
Pope Innocent III because women were throwing their infants into the
Tiber river. Unlike other European regions, in the Middle Ages the German mother had the right to expose the newborn. Generally, unwanted children were often abandoned in the High Middle Ages, usually by leaving them at the door of a church or
abbey. If the baby was found in time, the clergy would take care of their upbringing, which gave rise to the first
orphanages. However, very high sex ratios were common in even late medieval Europe, which may indicate sex-selective infanticide. The
Waldensians, a pre-Reformation medieval Christian sect deemed heretical by the
Catholic Church, were accused of participating in infanticide.
Judaism by
Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 1860, Abraham is shown not sacrificing Isaac. Judaism prohibits infanticide, and has for some time, dating back to at least the early
Common Era. Roman historians wrote about the ideas and customs of other peoples, which often diverged from their own.
Tacitus recorded that the Jews "take thought to increase their numbers, for they regard it as a crime to kill any late-born children".
Josephus, whose works give an important insight into 1st-century Judaism, wrote that God "forbids women to cause
abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward".
Pagan European tribes In his book
Germania,
Tacitus wrote in that the ancient
Germanic tribes enforced a similar prohibition. 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." It has become clear over the millennia, though, that Tacitus' description was inaccurate; the consensus of modern scholarship significantly differs.
John Boswell believed that in ancient Germanic tribes unwanted children were exposed, usually in the forest. "It was the custom of the
Teutonic] pagans, that if they wanted to kill a son or daughter, they would be killed before they had been given any food."
Christianity Christianity explicitly rejects infanticide. The
Teachings of the Apostles or
Didache states "thou shalt not kill a child by
abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born". The
Epistle of Barnabas makes a similar statement. 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.
Arabia Some Muslim sources allege that
pre-Islamic Arabian society practiced infanticide as a form of "post-partum
birth control". The word
waʾd was used to describe the practice. These sources state that infanticide was practiced either out of
destitution (thus practiced on males and females alike), or as "disappointment and fear of social disgrace felt by a
father upon the birth of a daughter". A tablet discovered in
Yemen, forbidding the people of a certain town from engaging in the practice, is the only written reference to infanticide within the peninsula in pre-Islamic times.
Islam Infanticide is explicitly
prohibited by the Qur'an. "And do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We give them sustenance and yourselves too; surely to kill them is a great wrong." Together with
polytheism and
homicide, infanticide is regarded as a grave sin (see and ).
Great Britain Infanticide (as a crime) gained both popular and bureaucratic significance in
Victorian Britain. By the mid-19th century, in the context of criminal lunacy and the
insanity defence, killing one's own child(ren) attracted ferocious debate, as the role of women in society was defined by
motherhood, and it was thought that any woman who murdered her own child was by definition
insane and could not be held responsible for her actions. Several cases were subsequently highlighted during the
Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1864–66, as a particular felony where an effective avoidance of the
death penalty had informally begun. (pictured upon entry to
Wells Asylum in 1893). Her trial led to stricter laws for adoption and raised the profile of the fledgling
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) which formed in 1884. The
Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 ended
parish relief for unmarried mothers and allowed fathers of
illegitimate children to avoid paying for "
child support". Unmarried mothers then received little assistance, and the poor were left with the option of either entering the
workhouse, turning to
prostitution, resorting to infanticide, or choosing
abortion. 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. Examples include
Mary Ann Cotton, who murdered many of her 15 children as well as three husbands;
Margaret Waters, the 'Brixton Baby Farmer', a professional
baby-farmer who was found guilty of infanticide in 1870; Jessie King, who was hanged in 1889;
Amelia Dyer, the 'Angel Maker', who murdered over 400 babies in her care; and
Ada Chard-Williams, a baby farmer who was later hanged at Newgate prison.
The Times reported that 67 infants were murdered in London in 1861 and 150 more recorded as "found dead", many of which were found on the streets. Another 250 were suffocated, half of them not recorded as accidental deaths. The report noted that "infancy in London has to creep into life in the midst of foes." Recording a birth as a
still-birth was also another way of concealing infanticide because still-births did not need to be registered until 1926 and they did not need to be buried in public cemeteries. In 1895
The Sun (London) published the article, "Massacre of the Innocents", highlighting the dangers of baby-farming, the recording of stillbirths, and quoting
Athelstan Braxton Hicks, the London coroner, on lying-in houses: The last British woman to be executed for infanticide of her own child was
Rebecca Smith, who was hanged in Wiltshire in 1849. The
Infant Life Protection Act 1897 required local authorities to be notified within 48 hours of changes in custody or the death of children under seven years. Under the
Children Act 1908 "no infant could be kept in a home that was so unfit and so overcrowded as to endanger its health, and no infant could be kept by an unfit nurse who threatened, by
neglect or
abuse, its proper care, and maintenance." Instances of infanticide in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries are often attributed to the economic position of the women, with juries committing
"pious perjury" in many subsequent murder cases. The knowledge of the difficulties faced in the 18th century by those women who attempted to keep their children can be seen as a reason for juries to show
compassion. If the woman chose to keep the child, society was not set up to ease the pressure placed upon the woman, legally, socially or economically. In mid-18th century Britain there was assistance available for women who were not able to raise their children. The
Foundling Hospital opened in 1756 and was able to take in some of the illegitimate children. However, the conditions within the hospital caused
Parliament to withdraw funding and the governors to live off of their own incomes. This resulted in a stringent entrance policy, with the committee requiring that the hospital: :Will not receive a child that is more than a year old, nor the child of a
domestic servant, nor any child whose father can be compelled to maintain it. Assistance could be gained through maintenance payments from the father, however, this was capped "at a miserable 2
s and 6
d a week". If the father fell behind with the payments he could only be asked "to pay a maximum of 13 weeks arrears". Sheffield required women to enter the
workhouse, whereas Halifax gave no relief to the women who required it. The prospect of entering the workhouse was certainly something to be avoided. Lionel Rose quotes
Joseph Rogers in
Massacre of the Innocents. Rogers, who was employed by a London workhouse in 1856, stated that conditions in the nursery were 'wretchedly damp and miserable ... [and] ... overcrowded with young mothers and their infants'. The loss of
social standing for a servant girl was a particular problem in respect of producing a bastard child as they relied upon a good character reference in order to maintain their job and more importantly, to get a new or better job. In a large number of trials for the crime of infanticide, it is the servant girl that stood accused. The disadvantage of being a servant girl is that they had to live to the social standards of their superiors or risk dismissal and no references. Whereas within other professions, such as in the
factory, the relationship between
employer and employee was much more anonymous and the mother would be better able to make other provisions, such as employing a
minder. 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. There may have been no specific offense of infanticide in England before about 1623 because infanticide was a matter for the by
ecclesiastical courts, possibly because
infant mortality from natural causes was high (about 15% or one in six). Thereafter the accusation of the suppression of bastard children by
lewd mothers was a crime incurring the presumption of guilt.
Asia China As of the
3rd century BC, short of execution, the harshest penalties were imposed on practitioners of infanticide by the legal codes of the
Qin dynasty and
Han dynasty of ancient China. China's society practiced
sex selective infanticide. Philosopher
Han Fei Tzu, a member of the ruling aristocracy of the , who developed a school of law, wrote: "As to children, a father and mother when they produce a boy congratulate one another, but when they produce a girl they put it to death." Among the
Hakka people, and in
Yunnan,
Anhui,
Sichuan,
Jiangxi and
Fujian a method of killing the baby was to put her into a bucket of cold water, which was called "baby water". Infanticide was reported as early as the , and, by the
Song dynasty (), it was widespread in some provinces. 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 Venetian explorer
Marco Polo claimed to have seen newborns exposed in
Manzi. Contemporary writers from the Song dynasty note that, in
Hubei and
Fujian provinces, residents would only keep three sons and two daughters (among poor farmers, two sons and one daughter), and kill all babies beyond that number at birth. Initially the sex of the child was only one factor to consider. By the time of the Ming dynasty, however (1368–1644), male infanticide was becoming increasingly uncommon. The prevalence of female infanticide remained high much longer. 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. If one includes excess mortality among female children under 10 (ascribed to gender-differential
neglect), the share of victims rises to one third. 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."
Sex-selected abortion or sex identification (unless needed for medical reasons), abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in present-day mainland China. According to the
US State Department and the
human rights organization
Amnesty International, China's former family planning program, called the
one-child policy (which was later relaxed and fully abandoned in 2021), nevertheless increased the frequency of infanticide. The sex gap between males and females aged 0–19 years old was estimated to be 25 million in 2010 by the
United Nations Population Fund. In some cases, in order to avoid China's family planning programs, parents did not report a birth to the government, so the newborn (in most cases a girl) did not receive an official identity and the parents could register another, later-born child without fines or punishment. In 2017, the government announced that all children without an identity could now have a legal identity, known as
family register. Four years later, all restrictions on the number of children were abandoned. It became common as a method of population control. Farmers would often kill their second or third sons. Daughters were usually spared, as they could be married off, sold off as
servants or
prostitutes, or sent off to become
geishas.
Mabiki persisted in the 19th century and early 20th century. According to one estimate, at least 97% of homicide victims in Japan in 1900 were newborns. To bear
twins was perceived as barbarous and unlucky and efforts were made to hide or kill one or both twins.
South Asia at Bengal (1852)
Female infanticide of newborn girls was systematic in feudatory
Rajputs in
South Asia for
illegitimate female children during the Middle Ages. According to
Firishta, as soon as the illegitimate female child was born she was held "in one hand, and a knife in the other, that any person who wanted a wife might take her now, otherwise she was immediately put to death". The practice of female infanticide was also common among the Kutch, Kehtri, Nagar, Bengal, Miazed, Kalowries and
Sindh communities. It was not uncommon that parents threw a child to the
sharks in the
Ganges River as a sacrificial offering. The
East India Company administration were unable to outlaw the custom until the beginning of the 19th century. According to social activists,
female infanticide has remained a problem in India into the 21st century, with both
NGOs and the government conducting awareness campaigns to combat it.
Africa In some
African societies some
neonates were killed because of beliefs in evil omens or because they were considered unlucky.
Twins were usually put to death in Arebo; as well as by the
Nama people of
South West Africa; in the
Lake Victoria Nyanza region; by the
Tswana in
Portuguese East Africa; in some parts of
Igboland,
Nigeria, twins were sometimes abandoned in a forest at birth (as depicted in
Things Fall Apart), oftentimes one twin was killed or hidden by
midwives of wealthier mothers; and by the
ǃKung people of the
Kalahari Desert. Infanticide is rooted in the old traditions and beliefs prevailing all over Kenya. A survey conducted by
Disability Rights International found that 45% of women interviewed by them in Kenya were pressured to kill their children
born with disabilities. The pressure is much higher in the rural areas, with every two mothers out of three being forced to kill their disabled child.
Australia Estimations of the prevalence of infanticide among
Aboriginal Australians vary widely. Many early European settlers considered it to be extremely common. For example, an 1866 issue of
The Australian News for Home Readers informed readers that "the crime of infanticide is so prevalent amongst the natives that it is rare to see an infant". In later times, attitudes shifted and the issue became contested. Author
Susanna de Vries said in 2007 that her accounts of Aboriginal violence, including infanticide, were
censored by publishers in the 1980s and 1990s. She told reporters that the censorship "stemmed from guilt over the
stolen children question".
Keith Windschuttle weighed in on the conversation, saying this type of censorship started in the 1970s. In the same article
Louis Nowra suggested that infanticide in customary Aboriginal law may have been because it was difficult to keep an abundant number of Aboriginal children alive; there were life-and-death decisions modern-day Australians no longer have to face. with a group of Aboriginal women, circa 1911 Liz Conor's 2016 work,
Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women, a culmination of 10 years of research, found that stories about Aboriginal women were told through a
colonial lens of racism and
misogyny. Vague stories of infanticide and cannibalism were repeated as reliable facts, and sometimes originated in accounts told by members of rival tribes about the other. She also refers to
Daisy Bates' now contested accounts of such practices, reproaching some historians for accepting them too uncritically. The anthropologists
Ronald Berndt and
Catherine Berndt note that "infanticide does seem to have been practised occasionally almost all over Aboriginal Australia, but it cannot have been so frequent as
Taplin ... and Bates ... suggest", while also cautioning that others "underestimated" its prevalence. The flesh of killed infants was sometimes
eaten, but this was not always the case. Usually only parts of the body were eaten, in "the hope that the child will be
born again, or that strength will accrue to another child". In 1881
James Dawson wrote a passage about infanticide among Indigenous people in the western district of Victoria, which stated that "
Twins are as common among them as among Europeans; but as food is occasionally very scarce, and a large family troublesome to move about, it is lawful and customary to destroy the weakest twin child, irrespective of sex. It is usual also to destroy those which are malformed." He also wrote "When a woman has children too rapidly for the convenience and necessities of the parents, she makes up her mind to let one be killed, and consults with her husband which it is to be. As the strength of a tribe depends more on males than females, the girls are generally sacrificed. The child is put to death and buried, or burned without ceremony; not, however, by its father or mother, but by relatives. No one wears mourning for it. Sickly children are never killed on account of their bad health, and are allowed to die naturally."
Australian Capital Territory A
Canberran journalist in 1927 wrote of the "cheapness of life" to the Aboriginal people local to the Canberra area 100 years before. "If
drought or
bush fires had devastated the country and curtailed food supplies, babies got a short shift. Ailing babies, too would not be kept", he wrote.
New South Wales A bishop wrote in 1928 that it was common for Aboriginal Australians to restrict the size of their tribal groups, including by infanticide, so that the food resources of the tribal area may be sufficient for them.
Northern Territory Annette Hamilton, a professor of anthropology at
Macquarie University, who carried out research in the Aboriginal community of
Maningrida in
Arnhem Land during the 1960s, wrote that prior to that time part-European babies born to Aboriginal mothers had not been allowed to live, and that "
mixed-unions are frowned on by men and women alike as a matter of principle".
Oceania New Zealand Marshall Islands 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.
North America Inuit There is no agreement about the actual estimates of the frequency of newborn
female infanticide in the
Inuit population.
Carmel Schrire mentions diverse studies ranging from 15% to 80%. Polar Inuit (
Inughuit) killed unwanted children by throwing them into the sea. The
Yukon and the Mahlemuit tribes of
Alaska exposed the female newborns by first stuffing their mouths with grass before leaving them to die. In
Arctic Canada the Inuit exposed their babies on the ice and left them to die. However, it must be acknowledged these infanticide claims came from non-Inuit observers, whose writings were later used to justify the forced
westernization of indigenous peoples. In 2009, Travis Hedwig argued that infanticide runs counter to cultural norms at the time and that researchers were misinterpreting the actions of an unfamiliar culture and people.
Canada The
Handbook of North American Indians reports infanticide among the
Dene Natives and those of the
Mackenzie Mountains.
Native Americans In the Eastern
Shoshone there was a scarcity of Native American women as a result of
female infanticide. For the
Maidu Native Americans twins were so dangerous that they not only killed them, but the mother as well. In the region known today as southern
Texas, the Mariame Native Americans practiced infanticide of females on a large scale. Wives had to be obtained from neighboring groups.
Mexico Bernal Díaz recounted that, after landing on the
Veracruz coast, they came across a temple dedicated to
Tezcatlipoca. "That day they had sacrificed two boys, cutting open their chests and offering their blood and hearts to that accursed idol". In
The Conquest of New Spain Díaz describes more child sacrifices in the towns before the Spaniards reached the large
Aztec city
Tenochtitlan.
South America Although academic data of infanticides among the indigenous people in
South America is not as abundant as that of North America, the estimates seem to be similar.
Brazil The
Tapirapé indigenous people of
Brazil allowed no more than three children per woman, and no more than two of the same sex. If the rule was broken infanticide was practiced. The
Bororo killed all the newborns that did not appear healthy enough. Infanticide is also documented in the case of the
Korubo people in the
Amazon. The
Yanomami men killed children while raiding enemy villages. The
Abipones, a small tribe of
Guaycuruan stock, of about 5,000 by the end of the 18th century in
Paraguay, practiced systematic infanticide; with never more than two children being reared in one family. The Machigenga killed their disabled children. Infanticide among the
Chaco in Paraguay was estimated as high as 50% of all newborns in that tribe, who were usually buried. The infanticidal custom had such roots among the
Ayoreo in
Bolivia and Paraguay that it persisted until the late 20th century. ==Modern times==