Infanticide

Infanticide, also known as child murder, is the deliberate killing of infants. Specifically, when the child is under a year old.

For instance, child sacrifice was a common practice in various ancient cultures. Also, in ancient Greece, Aristotle advocated that deformed children should be killed. During the third century in China, there was a practice of killing female infants and one of the popular methods used was “baby water," putting the baby into a bucket of cold water until it died of hypothermia. Also, post-partum depression and post- partum psychosis are cited as probable reasons for why some mothers commit infanticide. It was also observed that this is practiced by certain animals; for example, lion cubs may be killed when a new male replaces a previous male as pride leader as a means of bringing the females into heat sooner.