Infanticide is one of the most common, yet least understood of all human crimes. Although academic articles document isolated aspects of this problem, a single, unified analysis of infanticide has not been completed until now. In Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life, Larry Milner provides the first exhaustive survey of infanticide, drawing on historical data from around the world. He then uses this survey as a basis for investigating why infanticide has been present in every form of human society throughout history. Both comprehensive and compelling, this important study will intrigue students of human psychology, social welfare, and child abuse, and will promote further research on this alarmingly overlooked atrocity.
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About the Author
Larry S. Milner is a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine, Hematology, and Oncology. He currently has a private medical practice in Northbrook, Illinois.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A schizophrenic yet very useful monograph on infanticide,
By
This review is from: Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life (Paperback)
Larry S. Milner's
Hardness of Heart, Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide. Lanham, New York, Oxford: University Press of America, 2000, 623 pp. Review by César Tort First published in The Journal of Psychohistory 36 (2) Fall 2008 Republished on Amazon.com by Andreas Wirsén on a mission from the reviewer When I first discovered Lloyd deMause's writings in the internet in February 2006, I was slack-jawed. My first reaction was a healthy skepticism about the most gruesome aspects of childrearing and, like a member of a juror, I decided to listen to both sides of the story. I promptly purchased a copy of Colin Heywood's 2001 History of childhood because Heywood, a senior lecturer in economic and social history in the University of Nottingham, is not a psychohistorian. It surprised me that, although Heywood does indeed accept the historicity of the data of abusive childrearing in history, he did not reach the same stance of deMause by condemning the abuse. After reading his book I could not conjecture another reason for this omission but that Heywood simply chose to close his eyes. Thus the first "witness" against psychohistory in our hypothetical trial had, in fact, the opposite effect in my mind: the data that deMause had amassed was right, but an academic did not want to reach the natural conclusion that childrearing methods have been a nightmare throughout history. There are not many places in the internet to follow a discussion with knowledgeable academics hostile to psychohistory. But I found an active forum in the talk pages of the articles of Wikipedia related to Psychohistory. Again, after editing quite a few Wikipedia articles and engaging in the lively debates this experience strengthened, not weakened, my working hypothesis that the psychohistorical model was sound. Still unconvinced that the model could potentially shift the paradigm in the humanities and social sciences, I decided to read the most scholarly treatise on infanticide to date, Hardness of Heart, Hardness of Life, first published in 1998 and authored by Larry Milner, a physician who currently has a private medical practice in Illinois. Milner's treatise is certainly a treasure of very valuable sources for the psychohistorian. Unfortunately, in the 2000 University Press of America edition some pages of the endnotes sections are missing (upon request, the author is willing to provide the missing pages by regular mail). This printer's mistake aside, Milner's book is certainly the first exhaustive survey of infanticide. Like most readers of this journal, Milner accepts the evidence of the propensity of parents to murder their children, and in his webpage he estimates that the frequency of infanticide indicates that "up to 10-15% of all children ever been born have been killed by their parents: an astounding seven billion victims!" (www.infanticide.org). Far beyond my expectations, after studying closely Milner's monograph it corroborated, again, the veracity of the information about what deMause has termed "early" and "late" infanticidal modes of childrearing. Nonetheless, Milner's views on the subject, not the vast information he collected, left me so speechless that I cannot resist the temptation of quoting him extensively. In the first chapter of his treatise, Milner wrote: If our forefathers had to practice infanticide, it was because of the hardness of their life, rather than the hardness of their heart. It was not anger that led them to strangle or expose their children, it was the only way they could assure that the other members of a family could survive (p. 19). I could easily rebut this statement, but in Milner's work there are so many similar, outrageous statements that paradoxically it would be more eloquent simply to let him speak out. In the chapter on medieval infanticide Milner quotes from a book by Linda Pollock: that children "were often brutally exploited and subjected to indignities now hard to believe". Pollock might be described as an author who wants to idealize the parents' behavior. Just like Pollock Milner idealizes the parents adding that "this did not necessarily mean they did not love them" (p. 72). Before the school of thought named cultural relativism appeared in anthropology and history, nineteenth century scholars were more willing to express value judgments on infanticide. For instance, in his chapter on tribal infanticide Milner quotes Brough Smyth's 1878 study of the Australian aboriginals, a practice that Smyth described as "savage" and the tribes as being in a "half-civilized state". Milner, following the political correctness of our times, comments that Smyth's statement "is unfairly colored by our own particular moral judgments and bias" (p. 139). In the next page Milner states that the adults' needs have priority over the needs of the infant, and he grossly misrepresents deMause's views on infanticide: As a result, infanticide may become a necessity when certain stressful conditions, like extreme shortage of food, are met. According to Lloyd deMause, hunter-gatherer tribes are frequently forced into such circumstances, and are thereby "in the infanticidal mode" (p. 140). It must be noted that Milner seems to be familiar with deMause's History of childhood and the first issues of deMause's journal, which he mentions fairly often. In his study of the diary of Herold, the doctor of the infant Louis XIII, deMause has called our attention about how the infant was invested with massive, paranoid projections from the adults. Quoting Edward Westermarck, Milner projects similar delusions onto the child: "The adults had to resort to the killing of infants 'as a means of saving their lives'" (p. 141). In the next page Milner adds: "It was necessary at times to look at the greater good, and not let the birth of an unwanted infant jeopardize the survival of the entire family or tribe" (p. 142). How a tiny newborn could be so phenomenally powerful, Milner does not explain. In the same chapter on tribal infanticide and cannibalism Milner makes this remarkable comment: "The newborn was occasionally sacrificed in order to help save the life of an older sibling" (p. 151), and using language in a way I could only describe as Orwellian Newspeak, he adds: "[Australian] infanticide was never effected by violence, such as a blow or cut, but rather either *by exposure, strangling, or burying alive*" (p. 152; my emphasis). Milner continues with this misuse of language when writing about Eskimo infanticide. While he concedes that "the baby is killed", he comments that "this attitude is not cold-hearted", and here goes the Newspeak: "This *empathy* [my emphasis]...has resulted in a general understanding that children must be sacrificed before the adult" (p. 167). In the next pages I marked non-empathetic phrases toward the child such as "One advantage of this destruction of females at birth..."; "...forced circumstances to destroy them", and "they have even been forced to eat the children." I could easily fill a chapter with these sorts of quotations that appear throughout Milner's long monograph. But for the sake of brevity I will only add a few more. In the chapter about child sacrifice, Milner states: If so many diverse cultures thereby found the offering of their offspring beneficial, can we merely pass them off as chaotic, or pathologic, customs? I think not. ... Somehow we must find a more rational explanation for their behavior (p. 319). Milner repeats the above sentence almost verbatim in his final chapter, "Conclusion". What I found most offensive in this concluding chapter were these words by the author while speculating about a possible genetic explanation of infanticide: Such research must be supported, however, and our beliefs must include the realization that killing may not always be wrong. Quintilian [ca. 35 -100 CE] noted that "to slay a man is often a virtue and to put one's own children to death is at times the noblest of deeds" (p. 549). Milner wrote the above sentence on the very last page of his voluminous treatise. The remainder of the book contains a vast bibliography and an index of names and subjects. What strikes me the most is that Milner agrees with deMause and some historians about the magnitude of infanticide throughout pre-history and history. Milner even quotes anthropologist Laila Williamson as the chosen epigraph at the beginning of his book: "Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule" (p. 1). However, like most anthropologists and orthodox historians who have ventured on writing childhood history, Milner seems emotionally incapable of a proper evaluation of the data he amassed through ten years of research. If Milner is representative of the academic idealization of the parental Holocaust perpetrated since our simian ancestors, it is no surprise that psychohistory has yet to be recognized in the academia. >>> César Tort is a Mexican writer working on a five-volume project which purports to merge his own autobiography as an abused adolescent, Alice Miller's psychological insights, and psychohistory. His homepage is: www.antipsiquiatria.org
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Repetitive, changing sympathies,
This review is from: Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life (Paperback)
Milner's Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life is not uninteresting, it is extremely repetitive however, so much so that certain quotations appear 3 and 4 times. Also, it is sometimes unclear with whom the reader is meant to sympathize. Is this a treatise on children's rights? on women's right to abortion? on adults' rights not to want children? against the church? In fact the author, while repeatedly mentioning that the Catholic church has, throughout recorded history aimed to provide a haven for unwanted children, takes little real interest in this civilized fact and prefers to list, with apparent relish the countless ways in which biological parents have put an end to life because squeezed between monetary want and moral disapproval of unwed mothers. The author sides with the child at times and the rights due him against murderous parents but at times, it is the point of view of the "savages" which is described as comprehensible. Is this an instance of science in the service of a prejudice (against religious authority and therefore in favor of unmitigated oligarchy), somewhat like Survival of the prettiest : the science of beauty by Nancy Etcoff? It seems so. Also Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life contains proof of the worldwide prejudice against women both single and married, but what is the aim of this? Is is to exact reparations in the form of political power from the men who will determine the face of "western" society in the future. It is hard to say. There is slightly too much sympathy with barbaric practices for the reader not to conclude that the author or his sponsors seek permission from history to kill children (read "employees" or others I will not name) because this has been done before on earth.
1 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bottom Line: Sexism. sexism and more sexism,
By
This review is from: Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life (Paperback)
I was completely sickened, as I continue to be sickened, of the attitude throughout history of women and, in this book, female children.The geniuses in China are starting to realize what a mistake they made as there are very few women of marriageable age for their precious males (those women who weren't murdered for being the wrong gender are opting to marry foreign men. Wonder why?) I will never understand the ridiculous attitude that being female makes you sub-human and that being born with a uterus means you were born without a brain.
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