Early infanticidal childrearing
Early infanticidal childrearing refers to a model developed by Lloyd deMause within the framework of psychohistory which purports that childrearing in the paleolithic era and in contemporary neolithic societies can be summarized into three basic ideas:
- children are not considered human
- infants are useful to parents as erotic objects
- children aren't considered useful to any adult in any other way
This model explains the obseverved inordinate sexual attention paid by parents of contemporary primitive tribes to their children, such as sucking, fondling and masturbating.
It also explain the observed total lack of non-sexual attention paid by infanticidal parents, such as mutual gazes between parent and child.
Such mutual gazing is widely recognized in developmental psychology as crucial for proper mental and emotional development. Other examples of absent non-sexual attention include keeping infants away from open fires, preventing children from playing with knives, and stopping newborns from crawling into the sea.
The model also explains many other well-documented facts, such as the large jump in the mortality rate of Papua New Guinean children after they reach the weaning stage.
The consequences of infanticidal childrearing are many and devastating. Among them are recorded a high rate of insanity and suicide even among young children.
Various scholars (notably Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson) have rejected this view of non-Western societies. Anthropologists generally argue that everywhere parents must negotiate between nurturing and loving their children on the one hand, and disciplining and socializing them on the other. They further argue that what constitutes "love," "sex," appropriate sexual behavior, and approriate behavior in general, is culture-bound (and that much of what counts as average or even ideal child-rearing practices in industrialized societies would be inappropriate in non-industrialized societies, and might be considered abusive by people of other cultures). They suggest that documented increases in infant mortality, mental illness, and suicide are more likely consequences of stresses brought on by Western conquest or colonization. Finally, most anthropologists do not consider non-industrial societies to necessarily be more primitive than industrial ones and find the assertion of the model that all societies of the same technological level have the same child rearing practices to be suspect and unsupported by fact.
In return, Lloyd deMause and his followers accuse most anthropologists and ethnologists of counter-transferance and of being apologists for incest, infanticide, cannibalism and child sacrifice. They claim that what constitutes child abuse is a matter of objective fact and that some of the practices which mainstream anthropologists apologize for, such as beatings of newborn infants, result in brain lesions and other visible neurological damage. Other practices may result in psychosis, dissociation and magical thinking. They also claim that the notion of extreme cultural relativism proposed by many anthropologists is contrary to the letter and spirit of human rights.