Read an Article on Infanticide for Class, and Then . . .

So it's occurred to me that, since this is a blog about my writing, I can basically write about anything I want and still have it apply.  Because, you know, I'm writing it.

That said, I'll jump right in.  I was reading an article by Steven Pinker called "Why They Kill Their Newborns" for the composition class I teach tomorrow night, and it just annoyed me so much that I had to jot down my response to it.  Not a scholarly response, mind you--I have no intention of doing any research here or anything like that.  (It's an argument class I teach, and I have that kind of stuff on the brain.)  But I have to say something about the article, and I figure this blog is the best place to do it.

Steven Pinker is an intelligent person--that much is obvious.  Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and all that.  And he makes an interesting claim: that mothers who kill their newborn babies do it not because they're monsters or because they're insane, but because they're genetically predisposed to do so when found in their particular unfavorable circumstances.  Pinker says that "[in] most societies documented by anthropologists, including those of hunter-gatherers (our best glimpse into our ancestors' way of life), a woman lets a newborn die when its prospects for survival to adulthood are poor.  The forecast might be based on abnormal signs in the infant, or on bad circumstances for successful motherhood at the time."

Okay.  I get that.  And if he'd said, "This is why a young, single, homeless woman killed her infant," I'd get that. too.  I'd say, "Yeah, man, I think you're on to something."

But Pinker is talking about Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, "18-year-old college sweethearts [who] delivered their baby in a motel room and, according to prosecutors, killed him and left his body in a dumpster" and "another 18-year-old, Melissa Drexler, [who] arrived at her high school prom, locked herself in a bathroom stall, gave birth to a boy and left him dead in a garbage can."

Yeahhhhhh . . . that was biology?

To his credit, Pinker tries to address the possible skepticism himself:  "And yet the recent neonaticides will seem puzzling.  These are middle-class girls whose babies would have been kept far from starvation by the girl's parents or by any of thousands of eager adoptive couples.  But our emotions, fashioned by the slow hand of natural selection, respond to the signals of the long-vanished tribal environment in which we spent 99 percent of our evolutionary history.  Being young and single are two bad omens for successful motherhood, and the girl who conceals her pregnancy and procrastinates over its consequences will soon be disquieted by a third omen.  She will give birth in circumstances that are particularly unpromising for a human mother: alone."

All right.  Yes.  I get it--being young and single and alone might kick this biological impulse to kill one's child into gear.  That's what a prehistoric hunter-gatherer (or maybe just gatherer) woman would have done.  But would that prehistoric woman have brought about any of these unfavorable circumstances herself?  Would she have hid her pregnancy under, I don't know, her bearskin garment and gone off by herself to deliver her baby?  I doubt it, unless she were some kind of social outcast or something.  And that's what I think it all comes down to anyway--society.

I'm sorry, but I think that Pinker's idea that middle-class girls kill their babies because of genetic programming is ridiculous.  Like I said, maybe this would happen to a girl on the streets, or in a destitute family, who would have nowhere to turn.  Middle-class girls do have somewhere to turn, but they know that society will ridicule them if they do.  It's not that young, single women can't be good mothers today or raise their children in good environments--it's that society will look down on them for it, and the girls know this and can't bear the thought.  So they hide their pregnancies, shut their minds and emotions off to anything connected to their babies, and, in desperation, kill those babies or allow them to die because they think they have to to avoid the raised eyebrows and head shaking.  I'm not saying I don't pity this--I do--I just don't think it has anything to do with what Pinker is proposing.

Also, his idea that we have sympathy for those who kill their newborns but not for those who kill, say, their three-year-old children, because we don't see newborns as "complete" people yet seems rather out there to me, too.  I think that, if it's true we feel this way, it's about us, the adults and our psychological responses and attachments, not the growth of a baby into a "real" or "complete" person.  I know this is a really crude and simple example, but, well--I'm a doll collector.  And when I want to buy a particular doll, it kind of sucks to realize I don't have enough money for it and have to walk away from the shelf empty-handed.  But when I actually pick up that package and carry it around the store, believing that I'm going to buy it before talking myself out of it at the last minute, I have a lot harder time putting it back.  And I think about how much I wish it were a part of my collection a lot more after I leave the store than I would have if I had just looked at it wistfully for a few seconds.  And half the time I end up going back the next day to buy it after all.

Here's maybe a better example (and I don't have kids, so I'm going to talk about the next best thing): I saw a puppy the other day at a flea market that was adorable.  Absolutely adorable.  And I wanted it and had to leave rather sadly when I realized (once again) that I couldn't afford it.  Now, if I found out the next day that that puppy had died, I'd be genuinely sad.  I might even be depressed for a few hours or at random points during the next few days.  But it would be NOTHING compared to how I'd feel if my three-year-old dog, Dax, died.  I would be beside myself.  I doubt I'd eat.  Maybe I'd sleep--since that's my way of escaping pain.  And you'd better bet that I'd be depressed indefinitely.

And why?  Because of the difference in my emotional investments in the two dogs, over time.  Yes, I love Dax more, because she's been with me for three years, because I've learned all her little moods, because she's a part of so many of my memories.  That's why I'd be more upset if she died.  Not because she's older, but because I've spent more time with her, and thus bonded more with her (and allowed myself to bond more with her, because she's mine, and I know she's going to remain mine, unlike that other little puppy).

So I think this is what people are unconsciously thinking when they express more horror at the thought of killing a three-year-old, as opposed to a newborn.  They know how bonds strengthen over time (no matter how powerful that initial bond it), and they can't imagine the monstrosity of murdering something that should be so dear to you.  Not that a newborn wouldn't be dear--it usually is.  But I can imagine a scared, desperate woman cutting herself off from any love for her newborn, distancing herself from it, even imagining it isn't hers or that it isn't real.  Not because either of those things is true--but because the mind can be a very powerful thing, and we're very good at convincing ourselves of any number of lies.  Could she convince herself that a child she's thought of as hers for three years isn't anymore--or isn't even real?  I doubt it, unless she really is insane.

I feel bad for mothers who are so desperate not to be "found out" that they kill their children, and I feel sick about the dead babies.  It makes me sick that society makes people feel as though they have no options.  But I really don't think it's Pinker's version of biology at work here, no matter how good he makes his idea sound.

And now--whew, now I'm really glad I wrote this.  I don't feel annoyed anymore, and I think I can go to sleep.