Editing Early infanticidal childrearing

{{Short description|Term used in the study of psychohistory}}
'''Early infanticidal childrearing''' is a term used in the study of [[psychohistory]] that refers to [[infanticide]] in [[Paleolithic]],<ref>Decapitated skeletons of [[hominid]] children have been found with evidence of cannibalism. See e.g., {{cite journal  | last = Simons  | first = E. L.  | title = Human origins  | journal = [[Science (journal)|Science]]  | volume = 245  | issue = 4924  | pages = 1343–1350  | year = 1989 | doi=10.1126/science.2506640| bibcode = 1989Sci...245.1343S | pmid = 2506640 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book  | last = Maringer  | first = Johannes  | title = The Gods of Prehistoric Man  | publisher = Weidenfeld & Nicolson  | year = 1956  | location = London  | pages = 10–19  | isbn = 978-1-84212-559-5}}</ref> pre-historical, and historical hunter-gatherer tribes or societies. "Early" means early in history or in the cultural development of a society, not to the age of the child. "Infanticidal" refers to the high incidence of infants killed when compared to modern nations.<ref name="EMOL">{{cite book  | last = deMause  | first = Lloyd  | title = The Emotional Life of Nations
  | publisher = Karnak  | year = 2002
  | location = New York/London  | isbn = 978-1-892746-98-6}}</ref><!-- pp. 245f --> The model was developed by [[Lloyd deMause]] within the framework of psychohistory as part of a seven-stage sequence of [[Psychohistory#Psychogenic mode|childrearing modes]] that describe the development attitudes towards children in human cultures<ref>''The Emotional Life of Nations'' (op. cit.), [https://web.archive.org/web/20091027104425/http://geocities.com/kidhistory/childhod/chch72dm.htm Chapter 7, Part 2, "Childhood and Cultural Evolution"].</ref> The word "early" distinguishes the term from [[late infanticidal childrearing]], identified by deMause in the more established, [[Neolithic Revolution|agricultural cultures]] up to the [[ancient world]].

==The model==
This model is a psychological concept that aims to understand [[cultural anthropology|anthropological]] data, especially from such societies as the [[Yolngu]] of [[Australia]], the [[Gimi]], [[Wogeo]], [[Bena Bena]], and [[Bimin-Kuskusmin]] of [[Papua New Guinea]], the Raum, the Ok, and the Kwanga, based on observations by [[Géza Róheim]],<ref>{{cite book
  | last = Róheim
  | first = Géza
  | title = Psychoanalysts and Anthropology
  | publisher = International Universities Press
  | year = 1950
  | location = New York}}</ref> Lia Leibowitz, Robert C. Suggs,<ref>{{cite book
  | last = Suggs
  | first = Robert C.
  | title = Marquesan Sexual Behavior
  | publisher = Hartcourt, Brace & World
  | year = 1966
  | location = New York}}</ref> [[Milton Diamond]], Herman Heinrich Ploss, [[Gilbert Herdt]], Robert J. Stoller, L. L. Langness, and Fitz John Porter Poole, among others.<ref name="OnWriting">{{cite journal
  | last = deMause
  | first = Lloyd
  | title = On Writing Childhood History
  | journal = The Journal of Psychohistory
  | volume = 16 | issue = 2
  | year = 1988
  | url = http://psychohistory.com/articles/on-writing-childhood-history/}}</ref> While anthropologists and psychohistorians do not dispute the data, they dispute its significance in terms of its importance, its meaning, and its interpretation.<ref name="OnWriting"/>

Supporters attempt to explain [[cultural history]] from a psycho-developmental point of view, and argue that cultural change can be assessed as "advancement" or "regression" based on the psychological consequences of various cultural practices.<ref>{{cite journal
  | last = deMause
  | first = Lloyd
  | title = The evolution of childrearing modes
  | journal = Empathic Parenting
  | volume = 15| issue = 1 & 2
  | year =  1992}}</ref> While most anthropologists reject this approach and most theories of [[cultural evolution]] as [[ethnocentric]], psychohistorians proclaim the [[Psychohistory#Independence as a discipline|independence of psychohistory]] and reject the mainstream [[Franz Boas|Boasian]] view.

[[File:Tissot Pharaoh and the Midwives.jpg|thumb|Pharaoh and the Midwives, [[James Tissot]] c. 1900. In [[:s:Bible (King James)/Exodus#Chapter 1|Exodus 1:15–21]], [[Puah]] and [[Shiphrah]] were commanded by Pharaoh to kill all of the newborn baby boys, but they disobeyed.]]

This "infanticidal" model makes several claims: that childrearing in tribal societies included [[child sacrifice]] or high infanticide rates, [[incest]], body mutilation, child rape, and tortures, and that such activities were culturally acceptable.<ref>{{cite book  | last = Rascovsky  | first = A.  | title = Filicide: The Murder, Humiliation, Mutilation, Denigration and Abandonment of Children by Parents  | publisher = Aronson  | year = 1995  | location = New Jersey  | pages = 107}}</ref> Psychohistorians do not claim that each child was killed, only that in some societies there was (or is) a selection process that would vary from culture to culture. For example, there is a large jump in the mortality rate of Papua New Guinean children after they reach the weaning stage.<ref name=" Hardness">{{cite book
  | last = Milner
  | first = Larry S.
  | title = Hardness of Heart / Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide
  | publisher = University Press of America
  | year = 2000
  | isbn = 978-0-7618-1578-5}}<!-- pp. 144-45 --></ref> In the [[Solomon Islands]] some people reportedly kill their first-born child. In rural [[India]], rural [[China]], and other societies, some female babies have been exposed to death.<ref name=" Hardness"/><!-- pp. 236–240 --> DeMause's argument is that the surviving siblings of the sacrificed child may become [[Bicameral mentality|disturbed]].<ref name="EMOL"/><!-- p. 258ff -->

Some states, both in the [[Old World]] and [[New World]], practiced infanticide, including sacrifice in [[Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures|Mesoamerica]] and in [[Assyria]]n and [[Canaan]]ite religions. [[Human sacrifice#Phoenicia|Phoenicians, Carthaginians]], and other members of early states sacrificed infants to their gods, as described in the table of the psychopathological effects of some [[Trauma model of mental disorders|forms of childrearing]].<ref name="EMOL"/>

According to deMause, in the most primitive mode of childrearing of the above-mentioned table, mothers use their children to project parts of their [[Dissociation (psychology)|dissociated self]] onto their children. The infanticidal clinging of the symbiotic mother prevents individuation so that innovation and more complex political organization are inhibited.<ref name="EMOL"/><!-- p. 401 --> On a second plane, deMause maintains that the attention paid by mothers of some contemporary societies to their children, such as sucking, fondling, and masturbating, is sexual according to an objective standard; and that this sexual attention is inordinate.<ref>{{cite journal
  | last = deMause
  | first = Lloyd
  | title = The universality of incest
  | journal = The Journal of Psychohistory
  | volume = 19| issue =  2
  | year = 1991}}</ref>

The model is based on a reported lack of empathy by infanticidal parents, such as a lack of mutual [[gaze]]s between parent and child, observed by Robert B. Edgerton, Maria Lepowsky, Bruce Knauft, John W. M. Whiting, and [[Margaret Mead]], among others. Such mutual gazing is widely recognized in [[developmental psychology]] as crucial for proper [[Attachment theory|bonding]] between mother and child.

==Criticism==
Nineteenth-century British anthropology advanced a lineal, evolutionary sequence in a given culture from savagery to civilization. Cultures were seen on a hierarchical ladder. [[James George Frazer]] posited a universal progress from [[magical thinking]] to science. Most anthropologists of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century studied primitive cultures outside Europe and North America. [[John Ferguson McLennan]], [[Lewis Henry Morgan]], and others argued that there was a parallel development in social institutions. In the 1950s, led by [[Leslie White]], these evolutionist ideas gained influence in American anthropology.<ref name="Anthropology">{{cite book
  | title = Anthropology
  | publisher = [[Encyclopædia Britannica]] 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite
  | location = Chicago}}</ref>

The German-born [[Franz Boas]] managed to [[paradigm shift|shift the paradigm]]. His approach, later named [[cultural relativism]], resists universal values of any kind. According to Boas's principle, which represents the mainstream school in contemporary anthropology, a culture's beliefs and activities should be interpreted in the context of its own culture. This principle has been established as axiomatic in contemporary anthropology. The [[Vietnam War]] consolidated the Boasian shift in American anthropology.<ref name="Anthropology"/>

Since the psychohistorians' model is analogous to the now discarded [[unilineal evolution]] theory, anthropologists have been critical of the negative [[value judgment]]s, and the lineal progression, in the model currently advanced by psychohistorians as to what constitutes [[child abuse]] in primitive or non-Western cultures.<ref>{{cite journal
  | last = Paul
  | first = Robert A.
  | title = Review of Lloyd deMause's Foundations of Psychohistory
  | journal = Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology
  | volume = 5
  | pages = 469
  | year = 1982}}</ref> [[Melvin Konner]] wrote:

<blockquote>Lloyd deMause, then editor of the ''History of Childhood Quarterly'', claimed that all past societies treated children brutally, and that all historical change in their treatment has been a fairly steady improvement toward the kind and gentle standards we now set and more or less meet. [...] Now anthropologists — and many historians as well — were slack-jawed and nearly speechless. [...] Serious students of the anthropology of childhood beginning with Margaret Mead have called attention to the pervasive love and care lavished on children in many traditional cultures.<ref>{{cite book  | last = Konner  | first = Melvin  | author-link = Melvin Konner  | title = Childhood  | publisher = Little Brown & Co.  | year = 1991  | location = Boston  | pages = [https://archive.org/details/childhood00konn/page/193 193]  | isbn = 978-0-316-50184-2  | url-access = registration  | url = https://archive.org/details/childhood00konn/page/193  }}</ref></blockquote>

Psychohistorians accuse anthropologists and ethnologists of having avoided looking more closely at the evidence and having promulgated the myth of the [[noble savage]].<ref name="OneCosmos">{{cite book  | last = Godwin  | first = Robert  | title = One Cosmos under God  | publisher = Omega Books  | year=  2004  | pages = 166–174  | isbn = 978-1-55778-836-8}}</ref> They maintain that what constitutes child abuse is a matter of a general psychological law, it leaves its permanent marks on the human brain structure, [[post-traumatic stress disorder]] is not a culture dependent phenomenon or a matter of opinion, and that some of the practices that mainstream anthropologists do not focus on, such as beatings of newborn infants, result in brain lesions and other visible neurological and psychological damage.<ref name="OnWriting"/>

== See also ==

* {{annotated link|Animism}}
* {{annotated link|Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures}}
* {{annotated link|Cultural relativism}}
* {{annotated link|Endemic warfare}}
* {{annotated link|Moral absolutism}}
* {{annotated link|Religious abuse}}

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Early Infanticidal Childrearing}}
[[Category:Infanticide]]
[[Category:Parenting]]
[[Category:Child abuse]]