Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!bbncca!rrizzo
From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: "true religion" should affect your life
Message-ID: <863@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 25-Jul-84 16:48:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.863
Posted: Wed Jul 25 16:48:09 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jul-84 05:15:20 EDT
References: <765@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 24

Just a note to an unusually cogent article:  there's a set of historical
essays published by a medical doctor a few years ago which was well-received
professionally which strongly suggest by various inferences from what is
known that infanticide (the killing of infants by their parents or relatives)
was VERY common and widespread throught Europe up & into the 19th century.
How far significant rates of infanticide continued throughout the 19th and
possibly into the 20th century is nearly impossible to investigate because
of (ahem!) various taboos.  I don't remember what the book said about North
America.

Why might infanticide be an intrinsic part of family life for nearly all of
European history?  Up to at least the mid- or late 18th century, life for
most Europeans was in fact "nasty, brutish, & short", much more like condi-
tions in the 3rd World than we care to acknowledge.  Recent historical
studies repeatedly bear this out (a recent book on the social world behind
the French fairy tales collected by Charles Perrault paints a horrific pic-
ture of life for the vast majority of French up to the Revolution).

I'm sorry, but I can't remember the names of book or author.  It was
reviewed 3 years ago in the New York Review of Books.

(This is a followup to Fischer's ("anthro") posting.)

						Ron Rizzo