CHAPTER 3 - continued
|
TABLE
OF CONTENTS FOUNDATIONS OF PSYCHOHISTORY by LLOYD DEMAUSE |
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
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."
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:
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:
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 | 101-4 |
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
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
stuck 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 and 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 England.
Sturbridge, Mass.: OH Sturbridge Village, 1962.
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 America:
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-Century 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
Interdisciplinary 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 Anglo-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
Attitudes Toward Woman and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century
America. New York; Harper and Row, 1975, p.166, cite the
anonymous French book Onarnia as the first anti-masturbation book
for children and assume 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, "The American Child As Seen By British Travelers,
1845-1935" in Michael Gordon, Editor, The American Family '
in Social-Historical Perspective. New York; St. Martin's Press,
1973.
17. From Banks' Journal (1712). quoted in Frost. Quaker Family,
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.
FOUNDATIONS OF PSYCHOHISTORY TABLE OF CONTENTS |
on to
|
by: Lloyd deMause
The Institute for Psychohistory
140 Riverside Drive, NY NY 10024
To report errors in this electronic
transcription please contact:
[email protected]