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Infant Mortality: Infanticide in Ancient Greece and Modern-Day India

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Diana Tran
Jennifer Kitson
GCU102
18 Nov. 2014
Infanticide Through the Times
The human curiosity drives research in social statistics: demography. Even in ancient civilizations,
numbers were collected based on births, deaths, and child-rearing. Why? The study of demography is more
than numbers. Demography, an important subset of human geography speaks to the political, social, and
economic stipulations of any given society. This presentation is based off of Sarah B. Pomeroy's
observation of the Ancient Greeks' practice of demography --which she compared to that of modern India-during the Hellenistic era in Kuhrts Images of Women in Antiquity.

Demography is more than the mere science of vital and social statistics of
populations, demography is the enumerated measure of the social, economic, and
political impact of people. One of the most important pieces of demography is an
accurate reading of the infant mortality rate. The infant mortality rate is the rate of
deaths among infants, under one year old, per 1,000 live births. The IMR (infant
mortality rate) can be used as an indicator for the health of the whole population, the
amount of money allocated to health care, the availability for support services, and the
cultural implications of the youth. Whether it be 2014 or 300 BC, infant mortality can
say much about a populations history, culture, and economic status. While many factors
contribute to IMR such as environmental health, technology, socioeconomics, and more,
some countries still reflect ancient demographic skillsets -- countries like India, as
observed by Sarah B. Pomeroy.

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In India, more young girls than boys die [mostly due to infanticide and
abortion]...Some demographers explain this sex ratio by the preference for sons and the
reluctance to raise daughters. Others believe that women are not adequately counted by
the census, which gives yet another example of the neglect of women in India; for those
who are not counted are those who do not count; and who therefore do suffer neglect
(Kuhrt, Images of Women..., 208). Clearly, there is a particular degree of disrespect
pertaining to the female population of India. But why? And what does that say about
Indian society?
Today, technology has increased efficiency, productivity, and potential
exponentially all around the world. Be that as it may, many countries like India still
hone in their rural and agricultural roots, in high concentrations, to make a living. India,
one of the highest populated countries in the world, devotes twenty-one percent of its
annual Gross Domestic Product to its agriculture industry and over seventy-two percent
of its people live in its rural areas (Shah). That being said, seventy-two percent of its
people also lives in the most impoverished parts of the country due to the lack of safe
and clean resources. The heavy pollution and high population density in these areas
create a poor living environment and high inflation rates, perpetuating the lower class to
live in poverty with poor education, health care access, malnourishment, and little
access to potable water.
Throughout the rural states, the birth rates are high due to the poor education
level of women. Furthermore, many women choose to have many children to
compensate for the poor health of the overall population. By producing more and more

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children, the numbers will sustain the workforce so that rural families can produce
enough crop and maintain financial stability. However, this demand is skewed towards
Indias firm stance on patriarchy, where high frequencies of female infanticide occur due
to the inefficiency of labor produced by females. It is reported that female infanticide
existed in India since 1789 in several districts of [India]...In one district, only five
families were found who had not killed their new-born daughters (Sharma & Tandon
3). For centuries now, Indians have held the practice of female infanticide. Today, India
has gone even further as technology allows them to commit female foeticide -- the
deliberate abortion of a female fetus. Sex selective abortion cases have become a
significant social phenomenon in several parts of India. It transcends all castes, classes
and communities and even the North South dichotomy. In Mumbai, out of the 15, 914
abortions performed, one-hundred percent were those of girls foetuses (Sharma &
Tandon 1). Modern advancements have allowed women to determine the sex of their
fetus, even in the most remote areas of India, enabling women to abort the fetus long
before it is born.
A key fact in the flaw of Indian demography is that many deliveries occur in the
home and may not have been recorded by the census due to the familys disclosure or
infanticide, disabling the census from keeping an accurate number of exact births and
deaths in the nation. This irreverence towards the female race is fixed in the antiquated
dowry system, the economic and filial restraints of women, and social customs of the
Indian people that have degraded the woman -- putting her in such a subordinate state.
Despite the thousands of years and enormous leaps in scientific and healthcare

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improvements, Indias census gathering methods still reflect the peoples archaic belief
that stems from cultural, political, and economic stipulations. Be that as it may, how is it
that two societies, thousands of years apart have similar views on the inferiority of
women that have pushed them to practice female foeticide/infanticide?
Today, demographers study infant mortality based on prematurity, disease,
environmental health, and the overall health of the countrys population. However, in
Ancient Greece, very little of that information was ever collected. Though we have
recounts of the premeditated extermination of females, most of what historians know
today about diseases and health comes from the writings of Hippocrates or from works
of literature. Be that as it may, infant mortality can be measured on a different level. For
modern demographers, perhaps infant mortality in Ancient Greece is an abstract
reflection of cultural implications associated with politics, economics, and the social
construct of gender. Like India, Ancient Greece had a poor demographic system. Though
it may seem as though Ancient Greece and India have little in common, they share a
pedigree of agrarian society, a patriarchal stronghold, and a thorough infanticide
practice.
Today, Indians can practice foeticide due to the invention of amniocentesis, a test
done on the fetus by withdrawing fluid from the amniotic sac. This test can determine
the sex of the fetus. However, before Indians practiced foeticide, infanticide was the only
choice that allowed them to choose which child was going to live on the basis of sex.
Contrary to modern day Indians, the Greeks first practiced foeticide based on ancient
in utero methods: male foetuses are more active than females, the male foetus leans to

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the right, the female to the left, the pregnant women has a good complexion of the
foetus is male, a poor complexion if the foetus is female (Kuhrt, Images of Women,
207). Though these methods were passed on by word-of-mouth, many women believed
that there was a science to these methods. However, once these methods proved to be
inaccurate, the Greeks turned to infanticide, which they simply considered a late
abortion. They believed that infanticide was a form of family planning, where the father
must decide whether or not an infant is to be a member of his family (Kuhrt, Images of
Women, 207). For the Ancient Greeks, child-rearing was not a luxury, but a business.
Ancient Greece was a highly patriarchal society due to its groundwork laid in war and
politics, social constructs that women played no part in. Consequently, women and
female children were practically worthless. Be that as it may, these observations of
female neglect and infanticide come from works of literature, rather than works of
nonfiction. However, for the Ancient Greeks, works of Homer and Aristotle alike might
as well have been recountals of history due to the considerable lack of ample evidence.
Most of what is known now is relayed in broad context, primarily due to the meager
affinity for social statistics by the Ancient Greeks.
While the generalities of female infanticide and neglect in Ancient Greece are
known, few primary sources exist. The sources range from authors like Plato, Plutarch,
Apuleius and Seneca (to name just a few) down to a letter written in 1 BC from a soldier
to his wife in which he instructs her that if she gives birth to a son she should rear it, but
if she has a daughter she is to expose it (Kuhrt, Images of Women, 208). This crude
treatment of female infants was not uncommon throughout all of Ancient Greek history.

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Even in Classical and Hellenistic Greece, Greece displayed extremely high sex ratios
owing to female infanticide and neglect of female children (Pomeroy, Families, 120). In
life, women were regarded with contempt, secluded, uneducated, unfree, and unequal
(Katz 74) due to the belief that women were embodiments of lust and sexual aggression
that could not be contained. A common dualism contributed the Ancient Greek women
was evil versus good, where women were clearly seen as evil. To shelter this evil,
women were deliberately secluded from public life (Kuhrt, Images of Women, 81) and
were kept in the home. In Ancient Greek civilization, the home was a storage unit and
public spectacle for movable capital and property, a nursery for children, and a factory
where food and clothes were produced -- all areas of labor to be occupied by women to
keep them from leaving the home.
In addition to the neglect that women experienced in life, even the act of sexual
intercourse promoted the inferiority of women. Hippocrates, in his treatise On
Generation, wrote:
The sperm of the human male comes from all the humour in the body: it consists
of the most potent part of this fluid, which is secreted from the rest. The evidence
that it is the most potent part which is secreted is the fact that even though the
actual amount we emit in intercourse is very small, we are weakened by its
loss...Now here is a further point. What the woman emits is sometimes stronger,
and sometimes weaker; and this applies also to what the man emits. In fact both
partners alike contain both male and female sperm [the male creature being

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stronger than the female must of course originate from a stronger sperm]
(Hippocrates & Ionie 1, 3).
In Ancient Greece, the Hippocratic treatises, a work deemed scientific and holistic at the
time, created a biological and genetic basis for the inferiority of women. Theres no way
that women could have been given the upper hand in any Ancient Greek social
construct. Not only was a financial stigma attached to the sex of a child, the inferiority of
women is present as well. Though the woman carries the child for months, a child is the
property of the father, not the mother. Hippocrates works also infers that when female
children are born, the mothers sperm was stronger than the males -- alluding to the
emasculation when a female child is born, coercing the father to be rid of all female
children, or exclude them from the census.
Although there is an abundance of evidence showing the mediocrity of the
women in Ancient Greece, there is one source showing that men were as much subject to
patriarchal standards as women. However, this only occurs in Sparta. Patriarchy is the
overarching reason that women were subject to mass murder. It was their lack of
contribution to society through agrarian labor, their inability to participate in politics,
and their perpetual stronghold in domestic activities that disabled women from playing
an active role in society. Nevertheless, once the age of Spartans had surfaced, women
were seen as matrices, the mother and protector of the foetus. It is through the woman
that strong boys and girls were procreated. During the age of Sparta, patriarchy
exercises authority over men even more so than women...the father did not decide
whether to raise a baby; rather he took it and carried it to some place where the elders of

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the tribe sat and examined the infant, and if it was well built and sturdy, they ordered
the father to rear it (Pomeroy, Spartan Women, 34-35). Be that as it may, the age of
Sparta was rooted in warfare and battle. However, in most Greek city-states the
economy was run by the production potential of agriculture. This disparity in economic
fortification is the primary result of the gender equality gap.
Today, one of the many challenges that the world faces is overpopulation and the
comings of a food shortage. Though the term repopulation was coined recently, the
Ancient Greeks were more than passively concerned with the delicate balance between
food supply and population (Feen 447). In order to maintain the balance between food
and population in times of warfare, infanticide was practiced heavily as a form of both
family planning and population control. This would allow the Greeks to produce only
males, for they would become part of the infantry. Moreover, females -- since they could
not fight in wars or maintain the political stability at home -- were slaughtered. Though
this behavior seems crude, the Ancient Greeks viewed this practice as a consequence of
cold reality rather than a basis of metaphysics.
The geography of Ancient Greece made it difficult for social statistics to be
gathered due to the importance placed on warfare. Ancient Greece was formed by
rugged mountains. The mountains served as both barriers during warfare and
boundaries among city-states. Ancient Greece, surrounded by bodies of water, relied on
seafare for trade and communication. During antique times, warfare was common due
to the necessity for conquest and imperialism in order to expand the bounds of ones
nation. In Ancient Greece, even when city-states had been established, the people of

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Greece were always susceptible to invasion and warfare from neighboring city-states
and foreign peoples.Moreover, the internal factions of Ancient Greece contributed
highly to the lack of priority placed on collecting such demographics. For the Ancient
Greeks it was irrational to collect data on social statistics when there were wars to be
fought. Like many other civilizations, wars, in Ancient Greece, were fought by men -- not
women. Consequently, the desire for female children subsided. Back then, wealth and
stability were paramount to all other measures of a social construct. Although, one could
almost say the same for society today...
In modern India, the high population places many at risk of poverty and
malnourishment. Why? The archaic geography of India created many problems. In
ancient times, the people of India faced many extremes in regards to climate and
terrain. Be that as it may, society was able to flourish along rivers, by the lakes, in the
mountains, and throughout desert plains. While these topographic features vary widely,
agriculture and mining became the main source of income -- giving Indias its roots in
agrarian and rural lifestyles. Much of the work being done would be done by children
and men. Children were financial liabilities rather than members of the family. More
often than not, boys were stronger than girls, creating the margin of inferiority for
female children.
For both the Ancient Greeks and Indians, history, culture, and geography have
run their course all the while placing an inferiority on the female infant population. This
stems from the desire for financial stability and growth. Why keep a liability if it is
essentially useless? That was the view on women in both societies. While infanticide

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primarily applies only females, the practice contributes immensely to the infant
mortality rate. Infant mortality rates can speak to many factors of society, including its
allocation of wealth, access to healthcare among the classes, the overall health of a
population, and the spread of disease. Today, such key factors in demography are facile
to identify. However, in low socioeconomic regions, such attributes are poorly measured
and produce poor data. The same applies to ancient civilizations where the priorities of a
society relied less on social statistics to analyze the economic state of a nation and more
on the political and social infrastructure of the peoples land.

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Works Cited
Cameron, Averil, and Amlie Kuhrt. Images of Women in Antiquity. Detroit: Wayne
State UP, 1983. Print.
Feen, Richard H. "Keeping the Balance: Ancient Greek Philosophical Concerns with
Population and Environment." Population and Environment 17.6 (1996): 447-58.
JSTOR. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Katz, Marilyn. "Ideology and "The Status of Women" in Ancient Greece." History and
Theory 31.7 (1992): 70-97. JSTOR. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Lonie, Iain M., and Hippocrates. "On Generation." The Hippocratic Treatises, "On
Generation," "On the Nature of the Child," "Diseases IV" Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981.
1-6. Print.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Oxford: Clarendon,
1997. Print.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Spartan Women. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Shah, Dewang. "Agriculture Priorities and Need for Investment." N.p., 27 Dec. 2011.
Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Tandon, Sneh L., and Renu Sharma. "Female Foeticide and Infanticide in India: An
Analysis of Crimes Against Girl Children." International Journal of Criminal
Justice Sciences 1.1 (2006): 1-10. JSTOR. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.