Human pair-bonds may have multiple evolved functions. One long-standing hypothesis suggests that pairbonds evolved for male provisioning. Alternatively pair-bonds may occur as a response to male mating competition when benefits of staying with a current mate outweigh costs of seeking new mates. A third hypothesis suggests that pair-bonds function to protect against infanticide by aggressive mal...

This article seeks to make three separate contributions to the anthropological study of culture. Metatheoretically, it presents an evolutionary psychological perspective within which to study culture and generate specific theories of the origins, constancy, and variations in human culture. Theoretically, it provides a concrete evolutionary psychological theory of son-daughter preference: why pe...

Although the killing of dependent infants by adult males is a widespread phenomenon among primates, its causes and consequences still remain hotly debated. According to the sexual selection hypothesis, infanticidal males will gain a reproductive advantage provided that only unrelated infants are killed and that the males increase their chances of siring the next infants. Alternatively, the soci...

Infanticide and the Handicapped Newborn contributes yet more timber to the blazing debate over decision making in the neonatal intensive care unit. Controversy still rages over Baby Doe, a boy born in April 1982, with Down's syndrome and a tracheo-esophageal fistula. His parents refused to allow intravenous feeding and corrective surgery. The baby died at six days of age, survived by such troub...

The 'suppression' of unwanted babies seems to have been commonplace in antiquity. Early travellers to New Zealand, while remarking on how fond the Maoris were of their children and how well they looked after them, noted that infanticide was openly practised. The most favoured methods were squeezing the nose between the fingers, pressing the fontanel, or putting a wet cloth over the baby's head-...

This paper argues that the most famous objection to backward time travel can carry no weight. In its classic form, the objection is that backward time travel entails the occurrence of impossible things, such as auto-infanticide—and hence is itself impossible. David Lewis has rebutted the classic version of the objection: auto-infanticide is prevented by coincidences, such as time travellers sli...

The discovery of infant burials on excavated domestic sites in Roman Britain is fairly common but in the past these burials have often been dismissed as a product of unceremonious disposal. There is a growing literature which considers the phenomenon, but it has been dominated by debates around the suggestion that these burials provide evidence for infanticide, with a focus on the osteological ...

Two dozen nations have infanticide laws that decrease the penalty for mothers who kill their children of up to one year of age. The United States does not have such a law, but mentally ill mothers may plead not guilty by reason of insanity. As in other crimes, in addition to the diagnosis of a mental disorder, other factors, such as knowledge of wrongfulness and motive, are critical to the asse...