Infanticide

Anthropological Approaches to Infanticide

Anthropologists tend to consider the intentional killing of all children under the age of 4 to be infanticide, but they vary in their interpretations of the behavior and the contexts in which they apply it. Essentially, there are two approaches to infanticide taken by anthropologists. For the sake of simplicity, we will refer to them as “cultural” and “evolutionary” approaches. Anthropologists who employ cultural approaches tend to consider the immediate contexts surrounding infanticide and focus on the cultural implications, reactions, and practices related to the phenomenon. For example, in many cultures around the world, infanticide is common when a child is born deformed, the mother gives birth to twins, there is question about the paternity of the child, or the mother dies in childbirth. In these cases, infanticides are usually committed within cultural norms, by a family member (often the mother or father), and there are few or no social consequences for this action. Infanticidal practices that meet these criteria are relatively common across human cultures. According to the Human Relations Area Files, housed at Yale University, infanticide has been observed in 108 out of 258 cultures from every region of the world, and in most cases it involves one of the circumstances listed here.

Anthropologists who utilize evolutionary approaches to studying infanticide look beyond the cultural practices related to the phenomenon and focus on the effects infanticide has on the fitness of the individuals involved. To do this, researchers often employ a comparative approach, considering infanticide in other animals, particularly in other primates.

In 1974, Sarah Hrdy, a biological anthropologist, provided the first systematic observations of infanticide in another primate species and identified a potential causal factor for the behavior. Hrdy observed that male langurs (Presbytis spp.) committed infanticides when they could not be the fathers of the targets of their aggression. Hrdy also observed [Page 369]that females became sexually receptive shortly after their infants were killed, and they often mated with the infanticidal male. Hrdy's conclusion was that infanticide is a reproductive strategy employed by male langurs to increase mating opportunities and reduce competition for their offspring.

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