Historical infanticide in Europe was more widespread than estimated

July 18 () –

He “routine” infanticide of newborns by married parents in early modern Europe was a much more widespread practice than previously thought as a means of controlling resources and social status, a new book posits, ‘Death Control in the West 1500-1800: Sex Ratios at Baptism in Italy, France and England’by researcher Gregory Hanlon and his collaborators.

The French-trained historian of behavior explains that “in most cases, infanticide was a crime that left no wronged party seeking revenge if committed immediately.”. She could be overlooked and forgotten as time went on.”

Hanlon, a research professor at Canada’s Dalhousie University, draws attention to the limited scope of existing studies, which they have never focused on the sex ratio of children brought to baptism within hours or days of birth.

These records reveal striking spikes in the number of male baptisms following famine or disease. “Western historians have relied almost exclusively on the records of criminal trials in which single mothers or married women with children not fathered by their husbands concealed their pregnancies and killed their newborns alone or with female accomplices,” he explains. Married infanticidal mothers may have been a hundred times as numerous.”

Hanlon’s research suggests that in rural Tuscany (Ttalia), at the height of infanticide, victims could have made up as much as a third of the total number of live births.

Using baptismal records and church censuses drawn from dozens of parishes in Italy, France and England, Hanlon shows similar patterns of infanticide in cities and countries, Catholic, Calvinist and Anglican alike.

In rural 17th-century Italian Tuscany, Hanlon suggests that parents seemed willing to sacrifice a child if it was a twin, opting to keep only one of the newborns. In the northern Italian city of Parma, Laura Hynes Jenkins discovered that working-class parents preferred girls to boys.

Dominic J. Rossi, one of five alumni contributing to the book, finds a clear pattern of preference for girls in the French town of Villeneuve-sur-Lot after 1650. He posits the idea that “lower-class families they would want to marry off their daughters at the same time that economic conditions allowed them to make long-term plans for social movement.”

For his part, Evan Johnson, another of the collaborators, finds evidence showing that upper-class fathers in rural Mézin showed a clear preference for keeping newborn boys.

The book sheds light on the numerous babies whose existence went unrecorded and whose deaths went unpunished. Hanlon draws attention to the laxity of the punitive measures adopted for the crimes of infanticide.

“The courts acted against single mothers almost exclusively, but only if they deliberately killed the newborn,” he continues. “Simple abandonment was not a comparable crime.”

The study rigorously examines the roles of the state and the criminal justice system, along with the realities of poverty and social class structures. The book draws parallels between stories of infanticide and current debates on reproductive rights.

“Infanticide is murder, of course, but people didn’t consider it a crime.“, explains Hanlon, who says that “most people could live with it as an unpleasant fact of life.”

The authors invite readers to consider infanticide beyond a moralistic approach, to understand the ramifications of this social practice today.