Infanticide cases not uncommon

To most people, it is inconceivable that a mother might abandon or even kill her newborn baby. But there are, in fact, very specific factors which lead to such an act. As reported in yesterday’s Sunday Newsday, a 14-year-old girl last Friday buried her baby alive in a shallow grave after giving birth in an outside bathroom. The Princes Town teenager had kept her pregnancy hidden from her mother, and delivered the baby herself. She then went into the forest and put the baby in a two-foot-deep hole, covering him with dry leaves, soil, and bamboo. The infant was saved only because a villager had seen her carrying the child and found him after a search.

So what could have led the mother to commit such a heinous act? In cases of baby abandonment or infanticide, the mother is usually young, poor, and lacking in social support. The exception is when a mother has had many children previously in a short space of time — five babies within five to seven years, for example — which increases the risk of post-partum depression. In this state, the mother rejects the baby and may even try to harm it. Such reactions are not a perversion of human nature, but are in fact deeply rooted in our psyche. In the harsh environment of our ancestors, hard choices often had to be made by women. If resources — food and water — were limited, then keeping a newborn could well have meant that the older children would suffer and even die.

Deciding to kill or abandon an infant for the sake of the older children would never have been an easy decision, since parental love is also deeply rooted in human nature. But, since the practice is a feature of all societies, it is likely that human beings have been making these hard choices since prehistoric times. Indeed, even in the modern world, cultural traditions which favour males have led to skewed populations in India and China, where men outnumber women at a six to one and a 17 to one ratio respectively — a fact that can only be accounted for by female infanticide. To explain this is not to justify it in any way. But it does mean that the authorities here should not treat too harshly with the 14-year-old girl. She comes from a poor background, and her own mother is a housewife who has six children, with the entire family dependent on a CEPEP cheque. Indeed, the girl in question had been taken out of school earlier this year because the parents could not afford to send her.

But the authorities must also take measures to mitigate this problem. If this 14-year-old knew of the options available to her, she might not have almost killed her child. If she did not feel she could rely on her parents, then she should have known where she could go for counselling. And, if she had taken that first step, she would have found out about the options available to her — financial support for her and her child or giving the baby up for adoption. Indeed, had the schoolteachers noticed that the girl was no longer attending classes and brought this to the attention of the relevant officials, she might have gotten help before matters reached this pass.

Ours is a rich country, so the problem here is not a lack of resources. It is a lack of willpower, a lack of alertness on the part of social services personnel and, perhaps most of all, a lack of concern. These are the things that need to change before we can even think of becoming a developed nation. Finally, a 14-year-old girl is a minor. Some man was responsible for her pregnancy. Who is this man and how is society going to treat such a person? As far as we know sex with a 14-year-old is against the law.