Wrought by Society: Women's Motivations for Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century America

My paper offers a new interpretation of why colonial Englishwomen committed infanticide in seventeenth-century America, and how their motivations for the crime were shaped by evolving cultural attitudes about sexuality in the northern and southern colonies. In Puritan-dominated New England, the consequences of sexual immorality were particularly dire for women. Female worth was measured by a woman’s reputation, which could be irreparably damaged if she sexually transgressed. Pregnancy was inescapable evidence of a woman’s guilt. In this environment, the ostracism that resulted from sexual immorality made infanticide a uniquely “social” deadly crime. Women committed it, at least in part, to try to remain part of society. In the early southern colonies, where sexual morality was not as determinate of a woman’s future, women’s motives for infanticide differed as well. For poor women, there were grim economic consequences for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Servants who became pregnant had their periods of indenture extended, while other women simply could not afford to have a child. However, as the seventeenth century came to an end, sexual propriety took on a new importance for white women in the south, and their motivation to commit infanticide began to more closely resemble their northern counterparts. As racial slavery became entrenched, and sexual stereotypes were increasingly used to differentiate between white and black populations, infanticide began to take on a more social caste as white women sought to avoid the perception of transgressing racialized barriers of behavior.