Talk:Early infanticidal childrearing

Does this "model" reflect actual facts?

Increased mortality after weaning is common in non-Neolithic cultures as well; it's a consequence of inadequate nutrition, not of parental desire. Vicki Rosenzweig

You're wrong there. "Inadequate nutrition" isn't some random fact of reality. It's a consequence of feeding pap to children, and not having the empathy necessary to understand that crying means the baby is hungry. These are both psychological problems of the parents (since feeding pap is a response to the fear of breastfeeding).

And if you'll pay more attention to the page, the crash in child population (which is enormous among the Papua New Guinea tribes) is not a result of parental desires for the child's death, or parental sexual desire for the infant. The latter is irrelevant and the former only develops in advanced societies where parents actually take care of their children to some degree. No, the crash is due to total neglect. That makes it axiom #3 of the model, not #1 or #2.

Does it reflect facts? Every single fact I'm aware of regarding neolithic tribes! -- ark

Well it would help if I knew who you were. I have no way of knowing if you've lived in PNG for 30 years and your information is commonly found in peer reviewed journals or if you are just repeating what you've heard third hand. My bs alert is going off, and it would really help if you inserted information about how you know what you know.

I believe every fact I've given is commonly accepted, though I haven't verified it. It's just the interpretation of those facts within a model which is controversial. If even half the stuff I've read is true, this is the model that fits best.

Cites, please? You seem to be aware of facts that I haven't come across--they'd strengthen the article. And no, inadequate nutrition isn't random, but it's a common cause of death worldwide, not only in "neolithic" cultures (which I'd be happier if you specified). Nobody breastfeeds children forever, and most cultures wean children later than the contemporary US: the problem isn't that weaned children are given soft, bland food--it's that there often isn't enough of that food. Vicki Rosenzweig

That's not true. If it were true, we'd expect the weaning crash to be smaller or absent in the upper classes, when in fact it's worse. With modern medical knowledge, things may be different, or maybe not. -- ark

I was wondering where this article came from as well. If nothing else it needs more citation (i.e. who says this) and more context (i.e. do most antropologists actually believe this).

A disturbing number of anthropologists follow a radically different model called "Pedophilia is good". Or in their own words, "Pedophilia is a random and legitimate cultural variation." Let's not talk about that.

Why not talk about it? A lot of the times once you talk about it you find that the claim that X believes that is total non-sense.

Nice try. If this is true, we *need* to talk about it. How many anthropologists? (If this is something three people claim, it may be disturbing in that you wouldn't hire them to babysit, but it's not indicative of the consensus in the field.) Which ones? Do they actually say "pedophilia is good", or do they say "parents can touch children's genitals without sexual intention" (e.g., to wash an infant)? Vicki Rosenzweig

Both. And actually, they say that parents can masturbate children, and derive sexual pleasure from it, without it being incest. Which of course, is completely absurd.

I want anthropologists summarily disqualified from any matter related to childrearing or psychology. I except only the very few anthropologists who have specific psychological training or who are working in partnership with a psychologist. Without such training, they're simply not qualified to make any judgement about psychological or psychologically-driven phenomena. -- ark

Ark wrote: "The model of early neolithic childrearing developed by Lloyd deMause 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"

What deMause really wrote was:

The invention of agriculture and then of civilized urban life which marks the Neolithic is an achievement based on the evolution of childrearing. This evolution consisted of an increase in attention, consistency and identification by the parent with the child. Hunting groups can be distinguished from farming and urban groups by the shift from the impassive mother-who can handle her infanticidal wishes only by either merging with the child or by complete emotional withdrawal - to the mother-father unit, which is able to massively project their unconscious into the child, identify with it, and then severely discipline and shape it. The mark of early civilizations is, paradoxically, connected with the invention of severe physical punishment in obedience training. Even with contemporary groups, the higher the level of culture, the more consistant the child training for "obedience, self-reliance and independence."

I would really like to know where he got his information from. Danny

I meant earlier than that, the tribes which aren't civilized, the ones who don't provide any attention to children. The Neolithic is a long period after all. Perhaps it's better called 'early infanticidal childrearing'. Thanks for bringing it up. -- ark

Another issue, deMause doesn't think that stone age tribes are representative of infanticidal cultures for nothing, just because it's some outdated belief of anthropologists, he does so because their thinking patterns (extremely magical thinking, etc) correspond to what can be deduced from cave paintings and other such data. And even if they're not representative then they're certainly indicative, they're a lot closer to the neolithic than we ever will be! I'm sure he discusses the issue somewhere. -- ark

Still ridiculous. Just for starts, the Yolngu live in Australia, not PNG. At least get the geography right. Danny

No shit, they live in Australia. I guess that must be why deMause calls them aborigines!! Hey, have I ever said they lived in PNG??

We have practically no certain knowledge of paleolithic childrearing practices. There is absolutely no evidence that Paleolithic peoples did not gaze into the eyes of their children or used them as dildos. None at all. I will of course take this back if someone can cite any peer-reviewed archeological study that demonstrates either of these possibilities conclusively. By the way, ark, I am truly glad that you have finally decided to "think" about it. ;) SR

I did it about 30 seconds after I wrote that. The new pages are under infanticidal childrearing.

"absolutely no evidence"? That's like saying that we have absolutely no evidence that black holes exist. BS!

What we have is a good understanding of mental patterns across the ages, including what kind of practices give rise to those patterns. We have massive evidence of a progression of both throughout history. We have some direct evidence of the mental patterns of paleolithic people. The conjecture that child rearing practices were of the most primitive sort is supported both by good theory and the little evidence we do have. That's the same kind of evidence we have for black holes.

A little evidence goes a LONG way when it's supported by a sound theory. Of course, historians, anthropologists and ethnologists can have no experience with this since their theories are bullshit. When they even bother to build them. By the way, the "no evidence" criticism is often levelled against string theory by small-minded people who don't care to understand what's going on in the field. Which seems to be exactly the stance you're taking with respect to the alien mentalities of primitives. -- ark

I deleted the refernce to Yolngu and Gimi, who are not stone-age primitives. Note, the article still provides no evidence. I also deleted the closing paragraph about anthropologists. To my knowledge anthropologists have varying interpretations of different child-rearing practices. In any event an encyclopedia article must be both clear and accurate. Either do not make generalizations, and cite specific and attributed interpretations, or claim generality and cite current textbooks and review articles -- if you ish to make any claim about anthropologists. SR

As you wish. As I already said, I think that what anthropologists think or do not think is completely irrelevant because they're simply not qualified. I do think the basis of deMause's theory, the study of cave paintings

well, god help us if archeologists in the future dig up cubist paintings and try to infer from them 20th century life or mentality in as sloppy and lazy a fashion as deMause's interpretations of cave-art!

The simplest interpretation is probably the best one. Noam Chomsky has made his political career on the "simple" interpretation universally rejected by all the "sophisticated" scholars. I think deMause is in good company.

and contemporary primitive tribes, needs to be mentioned. As it stands now, the reader might be confused why the New Guinean weaning crash is mentioned at all.

Some further ranting:

deMause's theory about childrearing evolution can certainly never be called good. Not like you'd call GR or QM good theories. But it's decent and there is a distinct shortage of decent theories; with deMause's being the only one I've ever heard of. -- ark

Why is the "stress" of contact with the modern world supposed to be an excuse for primitives going catatonic when other inferior cultures (such as pre-War Japanese) didn't? In fact, nobody tries to explain Japan's entering WW2 as anything other than a product of its own culture. Funny that.

If one were being honest, one would be forced to say that primitives are maladapted if they can't adapt to us. But that would automatically mean their childrearing is inferior and abusive. -- ark

As far as I can tell, this page is still offering a model to "explain" non-existent data: "This model explains the inordinate sexual attention paid by parents of neolithic tribes to their children, such as sucking, fondling and masturbating."

Mental patterns don't fossilize.

Neither does art. What's your point? And if you think the data on primitive savages is non-existent or not in need of explanation, or simply not relevant to the paleolithic then you're out of your mind.

Dismissing most of the people who have actually studied "primitive" tribes as "simply not qualified" isn't good science: it's about like trying to do cosmology while dismissing all observational astronomers, and their data. Vicki Rosenzweig

deMause isn't dismissing any of their data. He is however dismissing all of their conclusions. Which is exactly what anyone proposing a revolutionary theory does. -- ark

I mention that anthropologists violate (or support the violation) of human rights by apologizing for early infanticidal cultures. Well here are the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child they violate:

6.1 (right to life)
6.2 (right to survival and development)
7.1 (right to a name)
8.1 (right to an identity and name)
18.1 (right to concerned parents)
19.1 (protection from all abuse)
19.2 (right to programs to guarantee 19.1)
20.1 (right to state assistance when best interests are to be away from parents)
20.2 (right to alternative care in case of 20.1)
24.2 (right to health)
24.3 (right to abolishing unhealthy "traditional" cultures)
34 (protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse)
35 (protection from traffic in children for any purpose or in any form)
36 (protection from injurious exploitation)
37a (protection from torture)
39 (right to therapy to recover from any form of neglect, abuse, torture, etc)

And because Article 24.3 bears repeating:

States Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.

That includes the rapid elimination of all infanticidal cultures from the face of the planet.

--

Cultural relativists are really just scumbags. Back when states wanted to conquer and colonize the third world, academics were all for it. Now that those same states no longer do because it's no longer considered beneficial, they suddenly find "reasons" why it's bad to mess with other "cultures". Cultural relativists are just self-serving ivory tower academics apologizing for state power. Anyone who thinks that killing or raping children can be justified by "culture", or by "stress" or by anything should grow the fuck up. -- ark

Roadrunner, you stupid fuck. Just because you don't like the facts doesn't mean you get to deny they exist. If you question the veracity of the facts I mention then just ask SR you ignorant twit! -- ark

I will refuse to argue with you unless, you start behaving more civilly. Read the NPOV guidelines. "Facts" should be attributed. -- RoadRunner

If you'd asked, I'd probably have attributed. But you didn't ask, you vandalized the page. And since people much more knowledgeable about the subject (like SR) have never asked, I never feel no compunction in treating you exactly like a vandal. -- ark

Changing a page is not vandalism for NPOV. Read the wikipedia guidelines. They say to be bold and expect to have your work mercilessly edited.

I'm interested in what everyone else thinks. I'll leave the page alone if there is a consensus that ark has the better version or if someone I respect (like SR) edits the page.

--RoadRunner

Your "changes" are butchery and are idiotic. If someone thinks they're alright then I automatically discount their opinion. -- ark

Rape of infants:

155. Geza Roheim, Psychoanalysis and Anthropology: Culture, Personality and the Unconscious. New York: International University Press, 1950; Geza Roheim, "The Western Tribes of Central Australia: The Alknarintja." In Warner Muensterberger and Sidney Axelrad, Eds., The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, Vol. III. New York: International Universities Press, 1964, p. 194, 231.

156. Geza Roheim, "The Western Tribes of Central Australia," p. 236.

157. Geza Roheim, "Play Analysis with Normanby Island Children." In Warner Muensterberger, Ed., Man and His Culture: Psychoanalytic Anthropology After 'Totem and Taboo.' London: Rapp & Whiting, 1969, p. 179; Geza Roheim, "The Western Tribes of Central Australia: Childhood." In Warner Muensterberger and Sidney Axelrad, Eds., The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Vol. II. New York: International Universities Press, 1962, p. 207.

158. Lia Leibowitz, Females, Males, Families: A Biosocial Approach. North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1978, p. 135.

159. Robert C. Suggs, Marquesan Sexual Behavior. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966, p. 42.

160. Milton Diamond, "Selected Cross-Generational Sexual Behavior in Traditional Hawai'i: A Sexological Ethnography." In Jay R. Feierman, Ed., Pedophilia: Biosocial Dimensions. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990, p. 430.

161. Ibid., p. 431.

162. Herman Heinrich Ploss, Das Weib in der Natur- und Volkerkunde: Anthropologische Studien. II. Band 1. Leipzig, 1887, p. 144.

163. Herman Heinrich Ploss, Max Bartels and Paul Bartels. Femina Libido Sexualis: Compendium of the Psychology, Anthropology and Anatomy of the Sexual Characteristics of the Woman. New York: The Medical Press, 1965, p. 140; Robert C. Suggs, Marquesan Sexual Behavior. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966, 177.

164. Gilbert Herdt and Robert J. Stoller, Intimate Communications: Erotics and the Study of Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, pp. 139, 274.

165. L. L. Langness, "Oedipus in the New Guinea Highlands?" Ethos 18(1990): 395

166. Ibid., p. 399.

167. Geza Roheim, Psychoanalysis and Anthropology, p. 160.

170. Herdt and Stoller, Intimate Communications, pp. 72, 138, 163.

177. Fitz John Porter Poole, "Folk Models of Eroticism in Mothers and Sons: Aspects of Sexuality Among Bimin-Kuskusmin." Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 1983; "Cultural Images of Women as Mothers: Motherhood Among the Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Guinea." Social Analysis 15(1984): 73-93; "Coming Into Social Being: Cultural Images of Infancts in Bimin-Kuskusmin Folk Psychology." In G. M. White and J. Kirkpatrick, Eds., Person, Self, and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsychologies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, pp. 183-242; "The Ritual Forging of Identity: Aspects of Person and Self in Bimin-Kuskusmin Male Initiation." In Gilbert H. Herdt, Ed., Rituals of Manhood: Male Initiation in Papua New Guinea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, pp. 99-154; "Personal Experience and Cultural Representation in Children's 'Personal Symbols' Among Bimin-Kuskusmin." Ethos 15(1987): 104-132; "Images of an Unborn Sibling: The Psychocultural Shaping of a Child's Fantasy Among the Bimin-Kuskusmin of Papua New Guinea." In L. Bryce Boyer and Simon A Grolnick, Eds., The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Vol. 15. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1990, pp. 105-175.

Non-sexual inattention:

190. Robert B. Edgerton, Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony. New York: The Free Press, 1992, p. 56.

191. L. L. Langness, "Oedipus in the New Guinea Highlands?" Ethos 18(1990): 390.

192. Maria Lepowsky, Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 90.

193. Bruce Knauft, cited in Anne V. Masters, "Comments on Anthropological Approaches to Human Infanticide." The Journal of Psychohistory 17(1989): 196.

194. John W. M. Whiting, Becoming a Kwoma: Teaching and Learning in a New Guinea Tribe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941, p. 25.

195. Margaret Mead, Growing Up in New Guinea. New York: William Morrow, 1930, pp. 23-24.

Well, here is my two cents -- I have shied away from further editing, but I do have an idea of what the final article should look like. In general I do not think Roadrunner's changes are vandalism, since s/he is not removing any content, nor even claiming that content is wrong, but rather merely modifying the language so that it is clear that not all people view things this way. "Early Infanticidal Childrearing" begins with some facts that most people would agree with: there are reports of sexual fondling of children in some societies; there are reports of (other forms of) child abuse in some societies, including neglect. EIC makes several claims, each of which is contentious: that these reports reflect general behavior (e.g., in the field I may never have seen the adults I lived with make eye-contact with their infant children (not true, by the way), but from this observation of a non-event I infer that NO adult EVER makes eye-contact with their infants in ALL non-induatrialized societies, a BIG jump that I personally think is unwarrented since the anthropologists are not using random sampling or any other sampling method designed to allow them to generalize all of their observations to this degree); and that these reported behaviors have the same meaning; and that they have the same, harmful, effects. I have no objection to an article discussing these claims, but I would object to any article that asserts that these claims are proven facts. Some people have a high degree of confidence in the, others do not -- that must be clear, and be made clear in a way that disparages neither side, slrubenstein

Only until deMause's claims that anthropologists' ranks are filled with pedophiles. At that time the gloves come off.

And Roadrunner's butchery had nothing to do with making it seem more balanced. They made it seem like the ONLY people who believed the specified data were deMause and his followers. And that the ONLY reason they believed this was because of the model.

If you're going to claim that only psychohistorians believe that model is correct then you better make sure to explain that anthropologists don't *have* any model at all.

Btw, there might seem to be a wide variance between primitive tribes to an anthropologist but to a psychologist they're all the same. They're all dissociative, psychotic, magical thinkers. -- ark

I've marked this as vote for NPOV to get other people's attention.

My problem with the page as written is that all of you references refer not only to Papua New Guinea but appear to refer to only one tribe within PNG. Even if that were accurate, the model asserts that all low technological people's behave this way which as far as I know has not been demonstrated. What about Polynesians or !Kung tribesmen, or people in the Amazon rain forest?

The issue of overgeneralization is a big one within the social sciences. Knowing something about a single tribe in PNG tells you *nothing* about people in the Amazonian rain forests, and it may not even tell you anything about other tribes in PNG.

-- RoadRunner

Oh right, because "the western tribes of central australia" is in PNG. You're such a moron! If you sincerely wanted me to add more examples then all you had to do was ask. But you're a dickhead. -- Ark

I do not understand this response by Ark, it seems a non-sequitor. I think RoadRunner was refering to this sentence in the article: "This model explains the inordinate sexual attention paid by parents of a single tribe in Papua New Guinea." Given that this quote is taken directly from the article, why would Ark call RoadRunner a moron for suggesting that western tribes of central Australia are in PNG? I do not see where RoadRunner made that claim. I do not see what Ark is responding to.

That FUCKER. Who do you think added that to the article? Roadrunner did! -- ark

Apart from the issue of NPOV, let me provide an example of why I find EIC so silly. One of ARK's prooftexts is to Suggs p. 42 as an example of how adults in non-Western societies rape children. (I am using a citation under ARK's heading, "Rape of infants:" in an above response to a query from RoadRunner.) Suggs explains in the beginning of his book how the Marquesans are often called "the Spaniards of Polynesia," for the people are such devout Catholics -- hardly my image of "neolithic" or "paleolithic" people! Anyway, concerning rape -- Suggs does NOT write this on page 42. Frankly, there is nothing on page 42 I would describe as "rape." But given ARK's prejudices, perhaps he is referring to this passage, which actually starts on page 41 (ARK, please be more careful with your use of citations):

In addition to the effects of vaginal astringents, a mark of beauty or more appropriately physical acceptability in women is a flat symphysis pubis. To this end, the Mons veneris is massaged during infancy and girlhood. Formerly this massage was accompanied by stretching of the labia to enongate them. This was done by the mother during the daily bath. The child was seized by the ankles and its legs held apart while the mother manipulated the labia with her lips. This practice is rare at present, however.

Note that the latter practice is rare, meaning few if anyone did it -- hardly something one can generalize from.

Bullshit. If it became a "mark of beauty" you can bet it was widely practiced. "rare at present" means exactly that: rare at present.

Now, there are two issues at hand. First, is this rape? I would not call it rape, although ARK seems to think this is rape. So we have different definitions of rape. It is alright for ARK to claim this is rape, but for him to say that "it is an established fact that adult Marquesans rape their children" is simply false. The text does not say whether the girls enjoy or hate this activity (in other words, is it forced). (On the other hand, I have seen small children cry and scream as their parents place them in a bath -- is bathing children a form of child abuse, then? Certianly, parents bathing their children must often times bracket their own empathy for their child's suffering.) Second, EIC claims that such "facts" prove that children are valuable to their parents only as sexual objects. It seems eviden to me that if anyone gets sexual pleasure out of this activity it is the child, not the adult, and that the adult is not motivated by sexual desires or feelings. By the way, the same book, on page 39 describe the treatment of children as solicitous, which contradicts the claim of EIC that people like the Marquesans do not think of their children as human. Also, Suggs explains that although Linton infered that the Marquesans practiced female infanticide based on demographic data, the demographic data does not in fact sugggest infanticide and there is no evidence for infanticide. ARK, if you are going to read a book and draw on it for facts, please provide those facts accurately.

This last point leads me to wonder whetner ARK had read Suggs at all. Has he read any of these sources carefully? I sense the sloppiest sort of scholarship here, slrubenstein

Who gives a shit whether or not it's rape? Did I call it rape in the article at all? No. I called it "inordinate sexual attention to infants". Are you going to claim it isn't? Fuck, you're getting as stupid as Roadrunner.

By the way, what you're saying sounds disturbingly like what a pedophile would say. -- ark