Routine Infanticide by Married Couples? An Assessment of Baptismal Records from Seventeenth Century Parma
In: Journal of Early Modern HistorySearch for other papers by Laura Hynes in
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Abstract
This study uses baptismal records from the Italian city of Parma from 1609 to 1637 to chart the sex ratio of male and female infants at baptism. This article measures the Parman sex ratio against the natural sex ratio at birth for live-born infants, as determined by Praven Visaria, and offers preliminary findings that indicate that married couples used infanticide as a means of controlling family size and sex in seventeenth-century Parma. The 28 years studied encompass both relatively strong economic and agricultural years as well as a variety of crises. By selecting a period with both good and bad economic years it is possible to see if parents behaved differently as their household conditions varied. Further, dividing the approximately 30,000 baptisms by rural and urban jurisdictions and familial socio-economic status makes visible parental recourse to infanticide through unnatural ratios of males and females within different segments of society.
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2
Hannah Beech Nanliang, “In Rural China, It’s a Family Affair,” Time (2002) www.time.com/time/magazine/article /0,9171,250060,00.html.
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Kay Johnson, “Vietnam’s Girls Go Missing,” Time (2007) htttp://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,680240,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar.
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See Laura Gowing, “Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 156 (1997): 87-115; René Leboutte, “Offense against Family Order: Infanticide in Belgium from the Fifteenth through the Early Twentieth Centuries” Journal of the History of Sexuality 2 (1991): 159-185; Joanne M. Ferraro, Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the Republic of Venice, 1557-1789 (Baltimore, 2008).
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Gregory Hanlon, “L’Infanticidio di coppie sposate in Toscana nella prima età moderna,” Quaderni Storici 38 (2003): 459-60.
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Prior to 1760, after which infant mortality began to decline steadily, the occurrence of infant death was exacerbated by frequent wars, famines, and epidemics. Bellettini and Somaggia point out the specificity of the death registers in their parishes in separating the deaths of children under age seven, making it easier to study child mortality; A. Bellettini and A. Samoggia, “Evolution différentielle et mouvement saisonnier de la mortalité infantile et enfantile dans la banlieue de Bologne (XVIIe-XIXe siècles)” Annales de Démographie Historique (1983): 201. Similarly, Breschi and Manfredini found that 567 out of 1000 newborns survived to thirteen years of age in their study of an early nineteenth century parish in rural Tuscany; Marco Breschi and Matteo Manfredini, “Parental Loss and Kin Networks: Demographic Repercussions in a Rural Italian Village,” When Dad Died: Individuals and Families Coping with Family Stress in Past Societies (New York, 2002), 374-5.
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Routine Infanticide by Married Couples? An Assessment of Baptismal Records from Seventeenth Century Parma
In: Journal of Early Modern HistorySearch for other papers by Laura Hynes in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This study uses baptismal records from the Italian city of Parma from 1609 to 1637 to chart the sex ratio of male and female infants at baptism. This article measures the Parman sex ratio against the natural sex ratio at birth for live-born infants, as determined by Praven Visaria, and offers preliminary findings that indicate that married couples used infanticide as a means of controlling family size and sex in seventeenth-century Parma. The 28 years studied encompass both relatively strong economic and agricultural years as well as a variety of crises. By selecting a period with both good and bad economic years it is possible to see if parents behaved differently as their household conditions varied. Further, dividing the approximately 30,000 baptisms by rural and urban jurisdictions and familial socio-economic status makes visible parental recourse to infanticide through unnatural ratios of males and females within different segments of society.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 730 | 188 | 12 |
| Full Text Views | 195 | 7 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 114 | 13 | 0 |