Nisa, The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman by Majorie Shostak. In addition, a historical perspective of infanticide will be presented as well as its practice in other primitive cultures. Lastly, the issues surrounding practiced infanticide today in America will be reviewed.
Defined as the killing of infants, infanticide is a practice grounded in the survival of those already living and the killing of the deformed. Cultural anthropologists have studied its practice among primitive tribes with a mix of fascination and horror and the recognition that its use is a particularly telling aspect of human social behavior. While historians have found its application beginning as early as Biblical times, others hypothesize that even the cave man practiced this form of selection as well.
From the beginning an important factor in the survivability of the human race was the need to lengthen the intervals between births. Mother's breast milk was vital to an infant and was the source of its nourishment for up to two years or more. Thus it was imperative to delay the birth of another sibling. Based on skeletal remains from the paleolithic (Stone Age) period, it is apparent that infanticide was as high as fifty percent. This figure corresponds to estimates made by Joseph Birdsall of the University of California in Los Angeles on the basis of data collected among the aboriginal populations of Australia (Harris, 1977, p. 15). The reason was to lengthen the interval between births and it is surmised that the short life span of the paleolithic woman was due in part to attempts to induce abortion to also prolong the time between births.
The first indication that infanticide was practiced as a result of deformities, both cultural and physical, was during Biblical times when Pharaoh's injunction to the midwives was that, "if it be a (Hebrew) son, then ye shall kill him" (Levine, 1986, p. 144). Plato is quoted as saying: "Those of the infer...