Historical Infanticide

For my next few posts, I'm going to look into infanticide throughout history. It is good to understand where this comes from in out society.

First off, we have to look at our ancestors. Infanticide is found as far back as hunters and gatherers. It was needed to prevent starvation and keep the population in check. As this article puts it: "One way to control the lethal effects of starvation was to restrict the number of children allowed to survive to adulthood. Darwin believed that infanticide, "especially of female infants," was the most important restraint on the proliferation of early man.", thus beginning the start of female infanticide. While female infanticide may have been necessary at times for the community at large's survival, it became something much worse.