[83] Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage, pp. 351-2.
[84] See page 51.
[85] Howard, A History of Matrimonial Institutions, III, 227-8.
CHAPTER VIII
Economic Forces and the Birth-Rate
In primitive times infanticide was often resorted to as a means of freeing the tribe from the care and responsibility of unwelcome children. McLennan says, “The moment infanticide was thought of as an expedient for keeping down numbers, a step was taken, perhaps the most important that was ever taken in the history of mankind.”[86]
Westermarck thinks McLennan places too much emphasis upon the extent of the practice of infanticide. “A minute investigation of the extent to which female infanticide is practiced has convinced me that McLennan has much exaggerated the importance of the custom. It certainly prevails in many parts of the world; and it is true that, as a rule, female children are killed rather than male. But there is nothing to indicate that infanticide has ever been so universal or had anywhere been practiced, on so large a scale, as McLennan’s hypothesis presupposes.”[87]
Among primitive peoples when starvation threatened a tribe, it is reasonable to believe a sacrifice of life was considered necessary to lessen immediate as well as prospective suffering and where the new-born infants were the selected victims, the female children would be sacrificed before the male. The services of women were of less importance to a warring community than of men, and under ordinary circumstances there would be a tendency for women to out number men since they were not exposed to the risks and hardships warfare imposed upon the men.
That infanticide was widely practiced where there was no danger from starvation does not seem likely. The maternal instinct is very pronounced among all animals, and the mother shows greater willingness to sacrifice herself than her offspring. It must have been necessary to overcome the mother feeling by force of reasoning, or by an exercise of tyrannical authority to win her consent.
There existed many natural checks to the increase of population among primitive peoples. Droughts and the ravages of diseases played no small part in keeping down numbers. These same natural forces in perhaps fewer forms are still effective in all countries of the world, producing an infant mortality of an alarming proportion.
Unsanitary conditions, bad housing, impure milk and water, and the heat of summer are among the checks to the more rapid increase of population. Mr. Phelps says in his statistical study of infant mortality, “In view of the many material changes in the living habits and industrial conditions of the world’s population in the last generation, the great advance in medical knowledge and the marked decrease in the general death-rate, the practical uniformity of the infantile death-rate the world around is simply astounding.”[88]