Essay On Female Infanticide

Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by every level of cultural complexity. It has been practiced from hunter gatherers to modern civilization, including our own ancestors. When pregnant it is understandable that couples wish for either a boy or a girl but, it is another thing if their wish of having either a boy or a girl is guaranteed to come true. Those couples who wish to have a son and has one child turns out to be a girl seem to be in a most painful dilemma. “Cultural norms dictate that daughters marry out and transfer their emotional and economic loyalties to their husband’s family (Jimmerson 1990).” In Chinese culture, son’s are known to support at old age while daughters are viewed as no source of future economic security. Although rural china has no system of old age support, farming couples without sons are faced with a great dilemma of destitution due to old age. Therefore, in certain cases, these rural couples have responded to the great dilemma of not having sons by practicing infanticide on their female neonates. “Female infanticide then became common in traditional china, through natural hardships such as famines, floods, widespread disease and overpopulation often converged with cultural norms that favored sons and encouraged hard pressed families to abandon or kill their infant daughters (Jimmerson 1990).” The costume of the traditional Chinese believes that family members should follow the ancestral tradition. If a living woman was not available, they would often go buy
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