1. Infanticide

2. The new-born cried lustily as it came into this world… when the
mother laid eyes on her baby, tears welled up in her eyes. They
were not tears of joy… What crossed [the mother’s] mind was
not the anticipation of the joys of motherhood but the trials
that lay ahead.
(Venkatramani 1992: 127).

3. How could a family of day-wage agricultural workers… afford to
bring up and marry off two daughters? How could they, when the
dowry demanded by bridegrooms was always astronomical? The
couple had decided to have a second child only in the desperate
hope that it would be a boy. But on this sunny day, the dream lay
shattered
“

4. Definitions
1

5. Explanations
2

6. Film
3

7. Definitions
1

8. the murder of an infant by its mother - and
its subset of neonaticide - when the killing
occurs within twenty-four hours of a
child's birth
“ (Ryznar 2013: 1)

9. Deliberate killing of children after [and
before] birth
“ (Watts and Zimmerman 2002: 1236)

10. Various
forms

11. sex-selective abortion

12. non-reportingof live birth and killing

13. ‘accidental’ death

14. out adoption

15. abandonment

16. 77 million missing girls
in Asia (Amartya Sen)
between
113 and 200 million women
demographically missing (UN)
1989
2010

17. hospitals, medical practitioners, communities,
relatives understand conditions and
conspire in murder
or longer-term neglect

18. not culture specific but
specific
vulnerability

19. Infanticide quite common in colonial America,
during which time an estimated one-third of all
killings were infanticides
(Ryznar 2013:1)

20. common in Ancient Greece, targeting unwanted,
vulnerable, or disabled children (Ryznar 2013: 1)

21. In the Kassena-Nankana District of Ghana… some
children are subject to infanticide because they
are regarded as spirit children sent “from the
bush” to cause misfortune and destroy the
family
(Denham et al, 2010: 609).
“

22. appears in Orwell’s
‘Down and Out in Paris and London’

23. There are very few cultures in which males are more apt to
be killed than females… In 19th and early 20th century
Western Europe, [infanticide]… was publicly condemned
but practiced covertly, in ways that made it appear
accidental or inadvertent
(Warren 1985: 32-41).
“

24. Defended and/or explained as
‘cultural’ issue
ordenied

25. Birth: girls killed
low pay negates
rationale for
schooling
wage asymmetry
devalue females
low earnings
justifies dowry
females married
off to reduce
cost and
incur costs in
new family
parents need
sons for
pensions
favour boys over
girls
generates
misogyny
towards females
girl children
feared

26. Explanations
2

27. Biology

28. Predisposition to males: more
valuable and important in harsher
environments

29. Socio-economic

30. It’s a Girl

31.  Ryznar, M (2013). ‘A Crime of Its Own? A Proposal for Achieving Greater Sentencing
Consistency in Neonaticide and Infanticide Cases’. University of San Francisco Law
Review, Winter
 Denham AR et al (2010). ‘Chasing spirits: Clarifying the spirit child phenomenon and
infanticide in Northern Ghana’.
Social Science & Medicine 71(3), pp. 608-615
Additional bibliography