Society in the Face of Infanticide: History, Theory, Policy

Abstract

The paper considers some reasons of the growth of social anxiety for the infanticide problem in 19th and 20th centuries, the evolution of Russian criminal legislation in reference with punishing of mothers-babykillers, the impact of physicians, lawyers, sociologists and biologists on the interpretation of this problem in past and present. The author shows how the practices of parental control of birth in the conditions of development of modern society were continually replaced by new forms of the regulation which are carried out by state-orientated specialists.