116
Birth imagery infused the everyday language of politics during 1775-6.
As in all wars,(44) the birth imagery was specific to the actual birth
practices of the time. Whereas today, with hospital deliveries the
norm, we go to war with images of "surgical air strikes",
colonial mothers gave birth at home, amidst much hemorrhaging, so
the American Revolution is filled with images of the "innocent
blood" of "infant babes", "feet sliding on bespattered
stones" and "streets stained with blood." Even the
familiar bedsheet of childbirth is evoked by one writer, who saw the
coming Revolution as "a large sheet . . big with Oppression and
desolation . . big with destruction . . "(45) Another writer
even imagined that ''women in childbirth were driven by the [British]
soldiery naked into the streets" at Concord.(46) Even the newly-invented
practice of tar-and-feathering is a projected acting-out of the birth
scene, with the mob turning the victim into a feces-baby, covered
with black tar and often also rolled in cow- or hog-dung.(47)
Thus "the child Liberty was born," as James Otis, Jr. put
it' ''midwifed into existence" by Americans acting out the group-fantasy
of war-as birth, fighting their way out of the fearful maternal womb
and identifying with "the child Independence struggling for birth
."(48) Thus America was "plunged into the dreadful abyss"
of war. as Edmund Burke put it.(49) And thus does the American Revolution
which we celebrate this year illustrate, like all historical movements,
the psychogenic law that history is the final receptacle for the repressed,
the final resting-place for infantile traumata, the group-fantasy
which at last reenacts and makes real that which we would most disown-our
own childhood.
117
APPENDIX: ON THE DEMOGRAPHY OF FILICIDE
Most of my psychogenic theory of history has aroused the anxiety
levels of the historical community, but no part of it has produced
more extreme anger than my insistence on the long continuity of filicidal
wishes of parents toward their children. The death of babies, on those
rare occasions when it enters into academic discourse, is considered
an unfortunate accident of demography, a mere side-effect of ignorance,
poverty, or the lack of medical technique - anything but a wish of
parents. As Dorothy Bloch and Joseph Rheingold have shown over and
over again in their writings,(50) the child always vigorously denies
knowledge of the parents' death wishes, preferring to believe the
worst about himself or herself rather than admit being completely
unwanted. Historical opinion echoes this deep revulsion against the
reality of filicidal wishes.
As just one example, Joseph Kett, in his review of my work in The
American Historical Review(51) says "almost everything"
is wrong with my notion that child abuse was widespread in the past,
because
To establish the pervasiveness of exposure of female children,
he cites a few instances of grossly imbalances sex ratios but passes
over the work of serious demographers who treat the evidence for
infanticide more cautiously.
Despite Kett's unnamed serious demographers," however. the facts
are precisely the opposite-out of the fifty-three articles written
by historical demographers on infanticide and sex ratios, all but
one agrees with me that infanticide on a large scale did indeed exist
during antiquity and the middle ages, only declining slowly in modern
times. Since this one exception, the medieval demographer David Herlihy,
is no doubt the authority for Kett's reference to "serious demographers,"
his statements should be examined in detail before moving on to the
mass of direct evidence for the steady decline of filicide shown in
Figure 5 above.
Herlihy's contention that "exposure of girl babies does not
appear to have been a common practice" in fifteenth-century Italy
is based on a single assertion, repeated throughout his writings,
that the constant excess of boys in the census figures he reports
is "principally due to a failure to report girl babies."(52)
The only evidence he gives in any of his writings for this strange
propensity to err only in counting girls-a propensity that mysteriously
declines after plagues, when girls are more welcome-is that "surviving
sermons provide a complete list of the sins of the age, and that crime
attracted no particular attention."(53) The possibility of the
crime being rather commonly accepted, and therefore not of "particular
attention," is not considered by Herlihy.
118
His actual figures show far more boys than girls in Renaissance Pistoja:
"The sex ratio of the population, urban and rural, for children
15 years of age and younger, is very high, 125 boys to every 100 girls.
This may reflect a peculiarity in the sex ratio at birth. Giovanni
Villani, for example, stated that at Florence in the 1330s, out of
5500 to 6000 babies baptized yearly, the number of boys surpassed
that of girls by from 300 to 500, but even this distribution, if accurately
reported, would at the maximum result in a sex ratio during childhood
of about 118."(54) This excess of boys (105/100 being the normal
birth ratio(55) is but another disproof ot Herlihy's "miscounting"
thesis, since one does not differentially miscount individual baptisms
by sex. Further, since girls are everywhere biologically hardier and
less susceptible to disease than boys,(56) a 125 to 100 sex ratio
from ages 0-15, later filicide excluded, would mean an infanticide
rate of something on the order of a third or more of all girls born.(57)
In all his writings, Herlihy gives only one instance actual]y backing
up his oft-repeated "no infanticide" thesis by figurers.
in his comments on two Carolingian surveys, he finds one, that of
St. Victor oi' Marseilles, with "106 female children but only
99 males. a ratio of 93.40," and concludes from this that "there
is no suggestion of female infanticide among the peasants of St. Victor."(58)
This conclusion, however. manages to overlook one crucial fact: in
over a third of this count, no sex was slated for the child. To conclude
that the unstated sexes of such a small sample must have been precisely
in the same ratio as the stated ones is completely unwarranted. Further,
in Santa Maria of Farfa, the second Carolingian study Herlihy cites.
where the number of "no sex stated" is much lower and the
total population high so that the survey is far more trustworthy to
a demographer. boys outnumber girls by 136 to 100. Herlihy can only
comment that this higher ratio is "scarcely creditable . . .
a further indication of the erratic reporting of children."(59)
For Herlihy, low ratios and incomplete surveys prove conclusively
"no infanticide," while high ratios and more complete surveys
prove "erratic reporting."
Figure 13 Carolingian Children's
Sex Ratios
|
Males |
Females |
Ratio |
No Sex Stated |
St. Victor of Marseilles |
99 |
106 |
93.40 |
155 |
Santa Maria of Farfa |
328 |
242 |
135.54 |
123 |
In contrast, an accurate and extensively analyzed study of Carolingian
sex ratios which agrees with my thesis of widespread infanticide is
provided by the work of Herlihy's former student, Emily Coleman.(60)
Her studies of the polyptych of Saint Germalti-des-Pres (ca.801),
which include the extensive use of product-moment correlation analysis,
conclude that the childhood sex ratio (136 boys to 100 girls) is not
explained by miscounting, since it
119
correlated (inversely) with the size of the farm, and therefore that
differential female filicide was definitely being practiced.(61) This
principle, in fact, applies to all our figures, since one can hardly
imagine a "propensity to miscount" which correlates with
size of land holdings and goes up and down before and after plagues.
The evidence cited by other historians agrees with this picture of
widespread filicide prior to modern times. Although census figures
are sparse in antiquity, and one might be tempted to doubt such studies
as Kirchner's Prosopographica Attica showing a ratio of five boys
to every girl in 346 families,(62) more recent studies confirm the
thesis of massive filicide in antiquity. William Tarn summarizes the
Hellenistic data:
Of some thousand families from Greece who received Milesian citizenship
c. 228-230, details of 79. with their children, remain; these brought
118 sons and 28 daughters [a ration of 42 /100], many being minors;
no natural causes can account for those proportions. Similarly Epictetus'
families, 32 had one child and 31 two; and they show a certain striving
after two sons. The inscriptions at large bear this out. Two sons
are fairly common, with a sprinkling of three; at Eretria, third
century, certainly two families in 19 had more than one son, which
is lower than the Miletus immigrants, but agrees with the evidence
from Delphi . . . more than one daughter was practically never reared,
bearing out Poseidippus' statement that 'even a rich man always
exposes a daughter.' Of the 600 families from Delphic inscriptions,
second century, just I per cent reared 2 daughters; the Miletus
evidence agrees, and throughout the whole mass of inscriptions cases
of sisters can almost be numbered on one's fingers. . . (64)
In his massive volume on Italian Manpower, classical demographer
P. A. Brunt confirms the existence of massive differential female
infanticide, noting that
we are told of a 'law of Romulus' whereby citizens were bound,
on pain of forfeiting half their property (a sanction of no force
against the proletarii), to raise all male children and the firstborn
girl, unless the child were maimed or monstrous, when it might be
exposed if five neighbors approved. The exposure of deformed infants
seems indeed to have been obligatory under the Twelve Tables and
to have been a normal practice. (64)
The demographer J. C. Russell. who spent his life studying ancient
and medieval populations, agrees that the high sex ratios in Roman
times are only explainable by differentially greater female infanticide,
and cites the English enumeration of John of Hastings (1391-2) as
similar evidence for the medieval period (170 boys to 100 girls).(65)
120
Renaissance demographer Richard Trexler agrees,(66) and devotes a
careful analysis of the records of fifteenth-century Florence which
illuminates the important distinction between the open infanticide
of previous times and the more common filicide of the later middle
ages which more and more replaced it. Trexler cites the Florentine
Catasto of 1427 which shows a growing imbalance between the sexes
as the age increases:
Figure 14 Childhood Sex Ratios in
Florence (1427)
birth |
115 |
0-1 |
118 |
1-2 |
119 |
2-3 |
120 |
3-4 |
119 |
Now this increasing sex ratio is not only the opposite of the normal
case in most populations today where female hardiness is allowed to
have its effect, but in addition Trexler shows that it is mainly only
true among the babies taken care of by paid wet-nurses: while among
those babies sent to the hospital girls fared about as well as boys.
almost twice as many girls as boys died before their first birthday
while at wet-nurse, either because of preferential treatment while
at wet-nurse or because of a greater propensity to send girls to ill-paid
wet-nurses, or both. This combination of outright infanticide at birth
by strangling, drowning or exposure plus later fillicide by sending
more often to wet-nurse or by sending with only enough money for a
few weeks upkeep to "killing nurses" used to taking the
hint(67) produces the overall fillicide rates which are used in my
chart (Figure 5).
Although occasionally very high boy/girl ratios are found in birth
registers [Feuchere's ratio of 162/100 for French nobility in the
late middle ages being the highest I have encountered(68)]. more often
the birth ratio ranges in the 110-120 area, while the census figures
range higher. so that both differential infanticide and later filicide
combine to produce the overall imbalance reflected in the raw census
figures. Perhaps the most extensive overall study of this combination
of infanticide at birth and filicide later on is the work of Ursula
M. Cowgill, a biologist at Yale, who has not only presented figures
breaking out the exact degree of differential infanticide and filicide
in York, England over three centuries, but also has actually observed
the mechanisms at work in the field in Guatemala. Working with the
parish registers of York from 1538 to 1812, Cowgill fed 33,000 births
into a computer and produced a graph of death rates for children which
showed girls dying at every age at a greater rate than boys, which
Cowgill says "suggests that parents in York took better care
of their boys than of their girls."(69) This differential treatment,
added to the infanticide occurring at birth (sixteen century ratio
at York of 110.8),(70) produced the overall ratio of 136/100. In a
pair of fascinating articles written with G.E. Hutchinson,(71)
121
Cowgill describes observing an Indian village in Guatemala where
the sex ratio is 178/100, an imbalance she says is wholly due to the
tendency of parents "to favor males . . . by breast feeding male
infants for a longer period than females. it is in fact possible to
find male children still being breast fed while younger female siblings
have already been weaned. Living with the people, one gets a strong
impression that, after weaning also, boys are better cared for than
girls" The practice of nursing boys longer than girls can, of
course, be found in the historical literature right along with the
other differential treatments mentioned. It is an interesting parenthetical
note that these filicidal Indians, like the filicidal Europeans of
half a millennia earlier, dressed their children as miniature adults,
unlike nearby tribes who had less differential treatment of girls.
In fact, Cowgill and Hutchinson even suggest that little girls' sexually
provocative behavior toward adult males might function as an evolutionary
mechanism necessary to prevent "demographic catastrophe"
by eliciting interest on behalf of little girls in cultural systems
so hostile to them-a polite way of saying that little girls have to
seduce males into letting them live!
Although Shakespeare, in Macbeth, assumed his audience was thoroughly
familiar with "the birth-strangled babe/Ditch-deliver'd by a
drab," by early modern times, especially in England and America,
differential infanticide proper had been almost entirely replaced
(for legitimate babies) by differential filicide after birth.(72)
Although F. G. Emmison calls infanticide in sixteenth-century Middlesex
and Essex "woefully common,"(73) by the seventeenth-century
Keith Wrightson, in an article reviewing infanticide in seventeenth-century
England, concludes that, although disposal of infants "took in
part the more familiar form of killing at birth," in the main
it was accomplished "by studied neglect during nursing, a form
of infanticide which would appear to have been regarded as less unambiguously
criminal."(74)
The ratios which I used in the graph for Figure 5 above confirm the
major thesis of my psychogenic theory of childhood evolution on the
gradualness of the decline of filicide, conscious or unconscious,
throughout history:
Figure 15 Sex Ratios Used in Graph (Fig.
5)
Place |
Source: Footnote |
Date |
Ratio: Boys/Girls |
St. Germain, France |
75 |
801-829 |
136 |
Spalding, England |
76 |
1268-9 |
120 |
Hastings, England |
77 |
1391-2 |
170 |
Florence, Italy |
78 |
1427 |
125 |
Pozzuoli, Italy |
79 |
1489 |
170 |
York, England |
80 |
1538-1600 |
136 |
Sorrento, Italy |
81 |
1561 |
91 |
Ealing, England |
82 |
1599 |
128 |
122
Padua, Italy |
83 |
1634 |
104 |
Florence, Italy |
84 |
1622-42 |
109 |
Clayworth, England |
85 |
1688 |
34 |
Lichfield, England |
86 |
1695 |
108 |
Austria |
87 |
1754 |
107 |
Plaisance, Italy |
88 |
1758 |
110 |
Spain |
89 |
1768 |
104 |
Spain |
89 |
1787 |
105 |
Spain |
89 |
1797 |
104 |
France |
90 |
1776 |
102 |
U.S.A. |
91 |
1703-1774 |
1014 |
What, finally, is one to make of such a long history of filicide.
One thing one must not conclude, and that is that it is a result of
poverty. The evidence is clear that rich as well as poor killed their
children. Coleman's figures on land holdings, for instance, show a
slight tendency for richer peasants to kill fewer girls, but even
the richest farmers had children's ratios running as high as 130-140,
only lacking the highest ratios of 150-200 which were sometimes found
among the poor. And the Florentine Catasto showed a much higher ratio
for the rich (those assessed more than 400 fiorins) than the poor!(92)
Since these are just the amounts of filicide revealed in the sex ratio
statistics, it is likely that one can conclude that being born of
rich parents and therefore being more likely to have been sent out
to wet-nurse gave one little if any advantage over being born poor,
considering the vast literature proving the increased death rate for
infants sent out to wet-nurse. (93)
Nor should it be imagined that these are all illegitimate children
who are being killed. Even if we did not have direct evidence of parents
ordering the killing of legitimate children,(94) almost all those
sent to wet-nurse were in fact legitimate (the notion that Europe
was ever 'tolerant' of illegitimate babies is of course quite untrue)-when,
for instance, the parents of Lyon sent one-half of their newborn to
the countryside to wet-nurse, and half of these died(95) the effect
of not keeping them home is clear. Therefore, I have to stick with
my original statement that legitimate children were killed in great
numbers throughout antiquity and the early middle ages, declining
in the later middle ages, and that only by the seventeenth century
was infanticide generally restricted to illegitimate babies.
What, then, can one conclude from all this demographic evidence as
to the filicidal atmosphere surrounding growing up in the past? First,
as to the extent of this filicide, my best estimate at this time is
still that the extent continues to be enormously underestimated -
that from a third to a half of all babies born in antiquity and the
early middle ages were probably killed, a
123
ratio only slowly to decline by early modern times. Since virtually
all illegitimate babies seem to have been killed, boys and girls at
the same rate,(96) and since a third or more legitimate girls than
boys were killed, one must account for literally millions of dead
babies when judging the emotional effect on those remaining. To illustrate
the kinds of proportions which can be hidden behind a childhood sex
ratio, a recent detailed study of a Japanese village from 1717 to
1830 showed a sex ratio at birth of only 114 boys to 100 girls, about
where much of Europe was in the early modern period after much of
the gross infanticide of legitimate babies had died down-yet a more
careful analysis of the age groups showed far more infanticide than
was at first apparent, since a large percentage of boys were also
killed (as revealed by probability analysis by age), the infanticide
being practiced "less as part of a struggle for survival than
as a way of planning the sex composition, sex sequence, spacing, and
ultimate number of children."(97) Boys were killed both to avoid
division of property and also simply because parents had had enough,
so the sex ratio was unbalanced by 114 to 100 but only because girls
were killed in yet even greater numbers than boys. I estimate about
a quarter of all legitimate children born in this village were killed,
from the figures given, to which must be added almost all the illegitimate
children, for a total of certainly over a third of all children born.
Societies still in an earlier psychogenic mode would run still higher
filicide rates, with half the children born being killed a not unlikely
figure for antiquity.(98)
The effects on the survivors can barely be imagined. The remaining
children would surely be impressed with the filicidal atmosphere of
the people around them, as they saw the rivers, ditches and latrines
filled with dead and dying babies, watched baptisms in icy rivers,
and visited villages of "killing nurses." Our demographic
and literary evidence may always fail to capture that crucial moment
as the parent screams at the child "I could have killed you,
you know," and only a literary genius like Louis Adamic can describe
his internal horror as he watched the "killing nurse" who
wet-nursed him croon to the infant at her breast that she would strangle
it that night.(99) Yet, all said, we surely by now have enough evidence
to warrant my statement in the main text of this essay that little
girls, hardiest of every species, grew up in a filicidal atmosphere,
knowing that their life was cheap, that their siblings were being
killed through infanticide and neglect by the millions, and that the
decline of this massive filicide by early modern times was part of
an important improvement in their ability to mother their own children
in turn when they grew up.
124
REFERENCES
1. For the best work on the sense in which America
was in fact the first modern democracy, where "consent of the
governed" was first made actual, see Gordon S. Wood, The Creation
of the American Republic 1 776-1 787. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1969. Also valuable in this respect is Richard L.
Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in
Connecticut, 1690-1765. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967
2. The consistency with which American historians even today have
stock to the notion of the environment causing major psychic and social
change can best be found in David W. Nobile, Historians Against History;
The Frontier Thesis and the National Covenant in American Historical
Writing Since 1830. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965.
The most popular book to depend on the environment thesis is by Frederick
Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History. New York: Henry
Holt, 1920. Most historians, of course, avoid the question of cause
entirely by remaining purely narrative and describing "preconditions"
rather than causes, which is to say previous adult historical events,
as for instance in Jack Greene's "An Uneasy Connection: An Analysis
of the Preconditions of the American Revolution" in Essays on
the American Revolution, edited by Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. pp. 32-80. Even then. however, the environmental
argument creeps back. which in Greene's case takes the form of claiming
the rough American woods needed "manly" personalities which
then turned into the need for a "manly" Revolution.
3. Mutation is "the ultimate source" not "the only
source" of genetic variation in modern synthetic biological evolutionary
theory. "Recombination. . . is by far the most important source
of genetic variation" says Ernst Mayr in his definitive statement
of modern synthetic theory, Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1 963, p. 1 79. So it also is with psychogenic
variation, with the "recombination" accomplished through
marriage.
4. Fathers only enter into the care of the child in its main formative
period, the first seven years or so, in the nineteenth century, so
the term "mother" here is correct for most of the evolution
of childhood, and is used here to best convey the colonial American
situation. For more on this and on the additional elements of the
psychogenic theory of history, see my article "The Evolution
of Childhood" in deMause, Editor, The History of Childhood. New
York: The Psychohistory Press, 1974 and Harper & Row, 1975.
5. P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225B.C. - A.D. 14. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1971, p. 151.
6. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Memoirs. Vol.1. Paris, 1895, p.8.
For the 80% wetnursing rate in Paris, see my chapter "Evolution"
in The History of Childhood, p.8; also Maurice Garden, Lyoti ct les
Lyonnais au xvIIIe Siecle. Paris, 1 970; George D. Sussman, "The
Wet-Nursing Business in Nineteenth-Century France." French Historical
Studies a( 1 975): 304-28. For evidence for the remainder of this
sentence, see the Appendix to this article; my "Evolution"
article; Elizabeth Wirth Marvick's chapter on seventeenth-century
France, "Nature Versus Nurture: Patterns and Trends in Seventeenth-Century
French Child-Rearing" in Thc History of
125
Childhood; Roger Mols, Introduction Jla d6mographie
historique des villes dEurope du xIVe au XVIIe sie'cle. Louvain, 1955;
Leon Lallemond, Histoire des enfants abandonn c's et delaisse's: etudes
sur Ia protection de l'enfance aux diverses epa ques de la civilisation.
Paris, 1885, pp. 161ff.; Louis Henry, "The Population of France
in the Eighteenth Century", in D. V. Glass and D. E. Eversicy,
Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography. London: Edward
Arnold, 1965; William L. Langer, "Infanticide: A Historical Survey"
History of Childhood Quarterly 1(1974): 353-365; Edward Shorter, The
Making of the Modern Family. New York: Basic Books, 1975; and Olwin
H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France 1 750-1 789. Oxford
University Press, 1974, pp.329-345.
7. Wflliam Roscue, Trans., in his Introduction to Luigi Tansillo,
The Nurse, A Poem. Liverpool, 1804; Maurice Andricux, Dai4y L4t tri
Papal Rome in the Eighteenth Century. London: George Allen & Unwin,
1968, p. 164; Anon., Praeputii Incisio. New York: The Panurge Press,
1931, p. 129; Albrecht Peiper, Chronik der Kiriderheilkunde. Leipzig:
Veb Georg Thieme, 1966, p. 147; Patrick P. Dunn, "'That Enemy
is the Baby': Childhood in Imperial Russia" in deMause, The Htvtory
of Childhood. New York: The Psychohistory Press, 1974, p. 389; Giorgio
Vasari, Le Vite de' Piu Eccellenti Pittori Scultori e Architettori.
Vol. 6. Novara 1 967, p. 1 52; Henrietta Caracciolo, Memoirs of Henrietta
Carracciolo. London, 1865, pp.14-15.
8. Pliny, Natural History. Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press,
1 942, p. 509.
9. Mary Rowsell, The Life Story of Cli. de Ia Tremoille, Countess
of Derby. London, 1905, p. 105; Guy Miege, The Present State of Great
Britain. London, 1907, p.222.
10. John Brownlow, The History' arid Objects of the Foundlitig Hospital.
London, 1865; Marvick, "Nature versus Nurture", p. 286;
"Diary of Samuel Sewall", Collections of the Mass. Historical
Society, Vol. V. 5th Ser., 1878, p. 103; David Stannard, "Death
and the Puritan Child" The
American Quarterly 26 (1974): 456-76.
11 Catherine Fennelly, Town Schooling in Early New Fri gland. Sturbridge,
Mass.: OH Sturbridge Village, 1 962.
12. Benjamin Rush, The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush. Edited
by Dagobert D. Runes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1947, pp. 111ff;
L.H. Butterfield, editor. Letters of Benjamin Rush. Vol. 1: 1761-1792.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951, pp. 511-12; Edmund S.
Morgan, Virginians at Home: Family Life in the Eighteenth Ccii tury.Williamsburg:
Colonial Williamsburg, 1952, pp. 7ff; J. William Frost, The Quaker
Family in Colonial A merica: A Portrait of the Society of the Friends.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973, p.77
13. For a comparison of American outside wetnursing, see Enos Hitchcock,
Memoirs of the Bloomsgrovc Family. Vol.1. Boston, 1790, pp. 19, 81-87
and John F. Waizer, "A Period of Ambivalence: Eighteenth-('entury
American Childhood" in deMause, History of Childhood, pp.353-S.
14. Contrary to John Demos' oft-repeated statement that American colonial
children were never swaddled. ("Developmental Perspectives in
the History of Childhood'' The Journal Of Interdisc'ipliiiat;v History
2 (1971): 17), swaddling in America actually continued to the mid-eighteenth
century, compared to the late eighteenth century in
126
England and the nineteenth century in France and Germany.
See An American Matron, The Maternal Physician; a Treattse 0,7 the
Nurture and Management ofln'dnts . . .New York, 1811, p. 136;Williain
P. Dewees, A Treatise on the Physical and Medical JYcatmerit of Children.
Philadelphia, 1 826, p. 64; Hugh Smith, Letters to Married Ladies.
New York, 1832, pp. 125, 265, 271; R. Turner Wilcox, Five Centuries
of American Costume. New York: Charles Scribners, 1963; Alice Morse
Farle, Two Centuries of Costume in America. Vol. 1. New York, 1903,
p. 311; The Winthrop Papers. Vol. 4 1498-1628. Mass. Historical Society,
1929, p. 263; Alice Judson Ryerson, Medical Advice on Child Rearing,
1650-1900. Unpublished Harvard Thesis, 1960; Claire E. Fox, "Pregnancy,
Childbirth and Early Infancy in Angl~American Culture: 1675-1830."
University of Pennsylvania doctoral dissertation, 1966, pp. 210-211.
15. Cotton Mather, The Pure Nazarite, Boston, 1723. Studies such as
F. H. Hare's ' Masturbation Insanity; The History of an Idea"
Journal of Mental Science 108 (1962): 2-25 and C. J. Garker-Benfield,
The Horrors of the HalILK,rowrr Life: Male A ttitudes To ward kiorn
err arid Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America. New York; Harper
and Row, 1975, p.166, cite the anonymous French hook Onarria as the
first anti-masturbation book for children and assunie that this "novel"
idea exorably spread (by reading) to other countries. They miss the
difference between tracts written to stop loss of semen, which go
all the way back to Aristotle (and of course apply only to post-pubertal
adolescents), and those which are aimed at the sensuality of self-manipulation,
which are applicable to children and which alone indicate the move
into the intrusive mode.
16. Charles H. Sherrill. French Memories of Eighteen Century America.
New York, 1915, pp. 71-72. this complaint is continued by subsequent
visitors to America, for which see Richard L. Rapson, "~1'he
Anierican Child As Seen By British Travelers, 1845-1935" in Michael
Gordon, Editor, The American FemUr' in S')cial-Historic'al PerspeLtive.
New York; St. Martin's Press, 1 973.
17. From Banks' Journal (1712). quoted in Frost. Quaker Fami4y, p.77.
18. DeMause, "Evolution"; Frost, Quaker k.ami4r', chapter
4; Robert ('.Moore, "Justification Without Joy; Psychohistorica
Reflections on Jcihn Wesley's Childhood and Conversion", Histor)'
(4 Childhood Quarterli' 2 (1 974); 3 1-52; Paul Sangster, Pity' SI)'
Srirrplrc 7(1 The L'varrgelic'al Revival and the Religious L'ducation
of Chrldr'rr 1738-1800. London, 1963; G. Rattray Taylor, Tire itrigel
1'!akcri 1 Stridi' it, tire Psychological Origins of Historical Change
l 7't0 1~ ~0. London, 1958; Jonathan Edwards, in Philip J. Greven
Child Rearing Cot cepts, 1628-1861. Itasca, Ill.; F. F. Peacock, 1974
p 7~
19. Fox, "Pregnancy", p.247; deMause, "Evolution pp
541ff.
20. Stannard, "Death and the Puritan Child", pp. 459ff;
Carl Halliday, Woman's Life in Colonial DQY.n Boston, 1922, p. 18;
Ernest Caulfield, "Pediatric Aspects of the Salem Witchcraft
'['ragedy" American Journal of Diseases for Children 65 (1 943);
792.
21. Memoirs 0/the Li]t of David Ferris. Philadelphia, 1825, p. 16;
Holliday, Woman's Ut, p.31.
22. Holliday, Woman ~' Life, p.60.
23. Jonathan Edwards, Representative Selections. Boston, 1935, p.86.
24. Hugh Barbour, The Quakers it, Poritan L'rrglarrd. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1964, p. 98; Nathan (Cole, quoted in Richard I..
127
Bushman, Editor, The Great Awakening: Documeirts 017
the Revival 0! Religion, 1740-1745. New York: Ateneum, 1970, p.70+
For the stages of the rebirth process, as well as for a lucid description
of the process of regression to the womb, see Stanislav Grof, Realms
QA the Human Unconscious.' Observations From LSD Research. New York:
'life Viking Press, 1975 and Francis J. Mott, f/ic Cuiversal Design
of Birth Philadelphia: David Mckay, 1948.
25. Edwin S. Gaustad, Tire Great A wakeiring in New Fugland. Gloucester:
Peter Smith, 1965, pp. 49ff.
26. For a detailed description of the relation of religion and politics
in this period, and particularly for evidence of the driving torce
of New Light psychology toward Revolution. see Alan Heimert, Religion
and the American Mind: From tile Great A't'aketii,ig IC) the Revolutioji.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Also see Richard L. Bushman,
From Puritan to Yankee: Character aird Soc'ial Order in Connecticut,
1690-1765. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 286ff.
27 That the disappearance of magic was not caused by intellectual
or economic change is conclusively proved by Keith i~homas, Religion
and the Decline of Magic. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1973.
28. The priority of motivational factors in the Demographic +I'ransition
is stressed by Robert V. Wells, "Family History and Demographic
Transition" Journal 0!, Social History 9(1975): 1-19. 'l'he ability
of America to be "modern" long before it was either urban
or industrial is stressed by Richard Brown in his "Modernization
and the Modern Personality in Early America: 1600-1865: A Sketch of
a Synthesis." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2(1 972):
20 1-228.
29. Bushman, Puritan to Yankee, p.286.
30. For a paradigmatic clinical case study of a contemporary intrusive
parent, see David L. Rubinfine, "Maternal Stimulation, Psychotic
Structure and Early Object Relations: With Special Reference to Aggression
and Denial'' Psycho analytic Studi' 0] 1/ic ('hild 1 7
(1962):274ff.
3 1 Beginning with Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origitis of the
A merican Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. t~or
the history of historians' interpretations, see Edmund S. Morgan,
Editor, f/ic American Revolution: Two ('cii tunes of Iii terpretatio
ii. Engle wood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1 965. A complete discrediting
of the notion of economic exploitation of America by England can be
found in Lawrence H. Gipson, The Coming of the Rei'oliitioii. New
York, 1954 and Oliver M. Dickerson, Tile Na vigatioti ii ets and tile
.11?? ericali R evc~lutioii. Philadelphia, 1951. Rigorous quantitative
disproof of the effect of economic level on foreign policy can be
found in Rudulph J. Runimel, "The Relationship Between National
Attributes and Foreign Conflict Behavior" in J. David Singer,
ed. Quatititative Iiiteriiatio,ial Politics: Insights and L'vidence.
N.Y.; 1968. pp. 204ff. Ihe massive study by Lewis F. Richardson in
his Statistics of Dead4i' Quarrels shows even by the widest definition
of "economic" only 29i. of wars since 1820 had any economic
causes (Pacific Grove, Calit>, 1960, pp.207-9.)
32. Thomas Fleming, /776: Year of Illirsiotis, New York: W. W. Nortou,
1975, p.7.
128
33. Peter D. MeClelland, "The Cost to America
of British Imperial Policy" American Economic Review 59(1969):
382ff. Still less can one imagine men going to war because they read
John Locke. And as to representation, MerriH Jensen concludes: "Most
American leaders . . . had no intention of asking for representation
in Parliament." The Foundi~ig of a Nation. N.Y., 1968, p.86.
34. E dwin Burrows and Michael Wallace, "The American Revolution:
The Ideology and Psychology of National Liberation" Perspectives
in American History 6(1972): 1 90. This splendid article is rich in
the metaphors of parent-child relations in politics.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., p.193.
37. James T Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation 1 783-1
793). Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1969, p. 316; William Goddard,
"ite Constitutional Courant" in Merrill Jensen, editor.
Tracts of the American Revolution. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967,
pp.85-6.
38. John Adams, "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law"
in The Works of John Adams. Vol.3. Boston, 1853, p. 460-I.
39 Burrows and Wallace, "American Revolution," pp. 205,
202. Also see Jensen, Founding ofA Nation, p. 131.
40. Ibid., pp.218-223.
41. Richard M. Brown, "Violence and the American Revolution"
in Kutz and Hutson, Essays, p.90. Not only was the tea tax law 6 years
old, but the far larger tax on molasses. sugar and wire was simply
ignored by the protestors.
42. DeMause, "Evolution," p.538.
43. John C. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1959, pp. 344. 356. One Boston doctor offered
to provide "medical evidence" that the tea was poisonous.
Jensen, Founding of a Nation, p.440.
44. For the war-as-birth hypothesis. see Lloyd deNljuse. '~The Independence
of Psychohistory" Histori' of C7iildh()od Qi'arter4" 3(1975):
163-83. The political theory of the time betrayed the thesis here
presented that group regression to birth was necessary to transfer
allegiance from Britain to America: it was for instance commonly acknowledged
that by returning to the "state of nature" (with its overtones
of nakedness and birth) would the colonists "break their bonds"
to Britain and be reborn as Americans.
45. Philip Davidson, Propaganda arid the America, Resolution. 1763-1783.
Chapel Hill: University of North (Carolina Press, 1 94 1, pp.9, 94,1
20ff.; Merrill Jensen, Editor, English Historical Documents. Vol.
IX American Colonial Documents to 1776. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1955, p.756.
46. Ibid., p.829. See also Jensen, Founding ofa Nation, p.591.
47. Brown, "Violence," pp. 103-4; Ann Hulton in 1'he American
1'()rv. Morton and Penn Borden, eds. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,
1972, p. 28.
48. Samuel Adams, quoted in Henry Steel Commager and Richard B. Morris,
eds., The Spirit of Seventy-S.x. Vol. 1. New York: Bobhs-Merrill,
1970, p. 294; Jeremiah Dummer, Defence 0] 1/ic New England ('/iarters.
London, 1765.
49. Jensen, Founding of a Nation, p.579.
129
50. Dorothy Block, "Feelings that Kill: The Effect
of the Wish for Infanticide in Neurotic Depression." Psychoanalytic
Review 52 (19f)5); Dorothy Bloch, "Some Dynamics of Suffering:
The Effect of the Wish for Infanticide in a Case of Schizophrenia."
Rvychoana4ytic Review 53 (1966); Dorothy Bloch, "Fantasy and
the Fear of Infanticide." Psychoanalytic Review 61 (1974); Joseph
C. Rheingold, The Fear of Being a Woman: A Theory of Maternal Destructiveness.
New York, 1964; Joseph C. Rheingold, The Mother, Anxiety and Death:
The Catastrophic Death Complex. Boston, 1967.
51. The American HistoricalReview 80(1975): 1296.
52. David Herlihy, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History
of an Italian Town, 1200-1430. New Haven, 1967, pp.80-SI.
53. Ibid., p.80
54. Ibid.
55. Even 105/100, the contemporary American birth ratio [Vital Statistics
of the US. - 1970. VoL 1 Nata/ity. Roekville, Md., 1975, p. 1-19],
is higher than in earlier times [Mortimer Spiegelman, In troductiori
to Demography. Rev. Ed. Cambridge, Mass., 1965, p.395.]
56. United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Demographic
Yearbook - 1973. New York, 1974, pp. 263ff
57. C. Klapisch ["L'infance en Toscane au d6but du xVe siecle"
Anna/cs de de'mographie historique (1973): 103] gives a further breakdown
of the same castasto as 1 29 for 0-1 year, 1 20 for 1-7 years, and
116 for 8-14 years.
58. David Herlihy, "Life Expectancies for Women in Medieval Society"
in Rosemarie T. Morewedge, ed. The Role of Wo prier? iii the Middle
Ages. Albany, 1975, pp.5-6
59. Ibid., pp.6-7.
60. The major studies by Emily Coleman include "Medieval Marriage
Characteristics; A Neglected Factor in the History of Medieval Serfdom,"
Journal of Interdisciplinary Histor)', 2(1971): 207-215; "A Note
on Medieval Peasant Demography," Historical Met/i ods Newsletter
5(1972): 53-58; "Linfanticide dans le Haut Moyen Age." Anna/es:
econorn k's, societe's, civilisat/ons, 1974: 315-335 (In Err glish
Worn err in Medieval
Society, Susan Stuard, ed. Philadelphia, 1976, pp.47-70.)
61. Coleman, "L'infanticide," pp.329 ff.
62. Cited in Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives arid Slaves:
Women in Class/ca/Antiquity. New York, 1975, p.70.
63. Wifliam Tarn, He/len/st/c Civilization. (3rd ed.) London, 1952,
p. 101.
64. P. A. Brunt. Italian Manpower 225 B. C-AD. 14. Oxford, 1971, p.149.
65. 1. C. Russell, British Medieval Population. Albuquerque, 1948,
p. 1968.
66. Richard C. Trexler, "Infanticide in Florence: New Sources
and First Results." History of Child/rood Quarrero' 1(1973):
911-116.
67. See both my treatment of killing nurses in my "Fvo]ution
of Childhood" in DeMause, ed. The History of Childhood, pp. 25-29
and Elizabeth Wirth Marviek, "Nature Vergus Nurture: Patterns
and Trends in Seventeenth-Century French Child-Rearing" in the
same volume, pp. 282-287.
68. P. Feuche're, "La noblesse du Nord de Ia France" A rina/es
6(1 95 1): 306-318. See also the decline in ratio at birth in John
Knodel, "Two and One Half Centuries of Demographic History in
a Bavarian Village." Population Studies 24(1970): 359.
130
69. Ursula M. Cowgill, "life People of York;
15311-11112." Sc'iczi (4/ic American, Jan. 1970, Vol.222, No.
I, p. ~011.
70. Ursula M. CowgiIl, "Life and Death in the Sixteenth ('entury
in the (~ity of York." Population Studies 21(1967): 61.
71. Ursula M. ('owgill and C;. F. Ilutchinson, "Sex Ratio in
Childhood and the Depopulation of the Pet&n, Guatemala."
ilijinaji Biology 35(1963):
90-104; Ursula M. Cowgill and (;. F. Hutchinson, "Differential
Mortality Among the Sexes in Childhood and Its PossiI)Ie Significance
in Hunian Evolution." Proceedings 0]' the Nali()J?al A cadc'rnj'
0]' S('icrrccs 49(1 963 );
425-429. Other South American societies show bigh sex ratios, but
are still in the earlier psychogenic mode of open infanticide; see
for instance James V. Ned, "Lessons from a 'Primitive' l~ec)ple''
Sc'iel?ec, Nov. 20, 1970 Vol.170, p.1116.
72. R. Thompson, "Seventeentb-('entury English and ('olonial
Sex Ratios: A Postscript." Population Studies 211(1974): 153-165
reviews Herbert Moller's. earlier work, and cites a birth ratio of
1 07/1 00 in Grau nt's tables for London covering the period 1629
to I 664. D. F. ('. Everslcy, "A Survey of Population in an Area
of Worcestershirc from 1660-11150 on the Basis of Parish Records."
Population Sizidic's 10(1957): 253-279 says childhood mortality in
England as early as the seventeentb century was the lowest in Europe."
By the I 9th century. all (if Europe showed sex ratios for children
of approximately 100/100: cli arts showing this material can be found
in Sweden. Statistiska ('entralbyrani. [Gustav Sundba"rg, ed.]
Ape~cus Statistiqiecs Iriterrratio,iaux. Vol. 11. Stockholm, 1908,
p. 118; Michael G. \Iulhill. The Dietior'ari' of Statistics. 4th Ed.
London, 1 899, p. 443; Alexander "on Ocitingen Die .~'()ralsh1tistik
in ihrer Bedeutung fu"r cilia Soc'ialt'thik. ERlangen. 11182.
pp. 60-61: and Statistica del regno d'ltalia. Pop ulazio ne ('clisirneti
tt' degli art tie/i i stati Sardi e censimeitti de Lombardia. Torino.
11162.
73. F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Lijt: Disorder. London. 1970. p. 156.
74. Keith Wrightson, "Infanticide in Earlier Seventeenth-Century
England." Local Population Studies 15(1975): 10-21.
75 Emily Coleman, "Infanticide in the Early Middle Ages"
in Stuard, Women Or Medieval Societ3', p. 511.
76 H, F. Hallam, "Some Tbirteenth-('entury ('ensuses." t.co,ioinic
II{vtort' Review. 2nd ser. 10(1957): 353. Accumulates the censuses
of Weston, Moulton and Spaulding.
77. Russell, "Late Ancient and Medieval Populations," p.
1611.
78. Herlihy Pistoia, p.110.
79. Russell, "Late Ancient and Medieval Populations, ,"
Table 34. Here, as elsewhere in Figure 15, 1 have computed life ratios
for the nearest possible age to (#14 years old allowed by the data.
80. Cowgill, "York," pp. 106ff, computed for the 16th century
from figures given for birth ratio in 16th c. in Cowgill, "Life
and Death in York," p. 61 and then applied to graph on p.108'
"York."
81. Russell, "Late Ancient and Medieval Populations," 'lahle
34,
82. D. F. C. Everslcy, et al., Air Iii trodoctioji to English Historical
Demography: From the Si.vteeiith to the l"'iiic'teeirth ('erituri'.
London, 1966, p.204.
83. Karl Julius Beloch.Bevolkerungsgeschichte Ita/icits. Vol. 1. Berlin,
1939, p.37.
84. Beloch, Italiens, Vol.1, p.43; Vol.2, pp.144-S.
131
85. Peter Laslett and John Harrison, "Claywortif
and Cogenhoc" in H. E. B~l and R. 1. Ollard (eds.), Historical
Essays 1600-! ½~0 Presented by David Ogg. London, 1963, pp.157-184.
86. D. V. Glass, "Two Papers on Gregory King," in D. V.
Glass and D. F. C. Eversley (eds.) Population in Histo~y. London,
1965, p. 181.
87. Roger Mols, Introduction a la detmographie historiquc des i'i/lcs
d'L.urope du XIVe sie'cle. 2nd vol. Louvain, 1955, p. 191.1 have averaged
the areas given by approximate population size.
88. Beloch, Italiens, Vol. I, p.45.
89. Massimo Livi Bacci, "Fertility and Nuptiality Changes in
Spain from the Late 18th to the Early 20th Century." Population
Studies 22(1968): 93.
90. Louis Henry. "The Population of France in the Eighteenth
Century," in Glass and Fversley, Population in History, pp. 500,
502.
91. A compilation from all state censuses which show age and sex breakdown
for children, averaged for three quarter-centuries, from U.S. Bureau
of the Census. A Century of Population Growth 1790-1900. Tables 81-103.
Washington, D.C., 1909; Herbert Moller, "Sex ('omposition and
Correlated Culture Patterns of Colonial America." William &
Mary Quarterly 2(1945): 113-153; Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D.
Harrington, American Population Before the t.edcral Census of 1790.
Gloucester, 1 966.
92. Trexler, "Infanticide," p. 101.
93. See references in my "Evolution" essay. pp.34-S and
Table 5 in John Knodel and Etienne Van de Walle "Breast Feeding,
Fertility and Infant Mortality: An Analysis of Some Early German Date."
Population Studies 21(1967): 118. Also see George D. Sussman, "The
Wet-Nursing Business in Nineteenth-Century France." French Historic'al
Studies 9(1975): 304-28.
94. DeMause "Evolution," pp. 25ff; Marvick, "Nature,"
p.282.
95. Pierre Goubert, "Historical Demograph and the Reinterpretation
of Early Modern French History; A Research Review." Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 1(1970): 47.
96. The portion of illegitimate babies born arid allowcd to live but
abandoned to institutions in 1 8th-century France was about one-third
[Louis Henry, "The Population of France in the Eighteenth Century"
in Glass, Population in History, p. 451 J . So the real rate of illegitimacy
must have been even higher. Of course, societies differ in actual
illegitimacy rates, but the notion held by some demographers that
illegitimacy was virtually non-existent in the Christian middle ages
and later is as fantastic as their faith that infanticide was lacking,
both stemming from the same source. "No marked sex differential
is observable in the children allegedly murdered" and "fifty-three
of the sixty-two children are unambiguously described as bastards"
in Essex in the seventeenth century, says Wrightson, "Infanticide,"
p. 1 2.
98. Sex ratios of 248 boys to 100 girls were reached in parts of 19th-century
India. See Kanti B. Pakrasi, Female Infanticide it? India. Calcutta,
1971. pp. 88, 235. Also see J. Hainal, "European Marriage Patterns
in Perspective" in Glass and Fversley, Population in History,
p. 127 for more on India, China and Eastern Europe.
99. Louis Adamic, Cradle of Life: The Story of One Man 't Beginnings.
New York, 1936, p.23.
100. Robert D. Rutherford, The Changing Sex Differential in Mortality.
Westport, Conn. 1975, p.9.
by: Lloyd deMause
The Institute for Psychohistory
140 Riverside Drive, NY NY 10024
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