An Assessment of Baptismal Records from Seventeenth Century Parma

Laura Hynes who wrote “Routine Infanticide by Married Couples? An Assessment of Baptismal Records from Seventeenth Century Parma” Used data from over thirty thousand baptisms from 1607 to 1637 to prove that sex-based infanticide was performed in both rural and urban Parma. While the natural ratio of males to females according to Praven Visaria’s work is 104 to 107 live males for every 100 live females, the data from Parma shows an overall ratio of 98. 9% which means there was an abnormal number of male infants compared to female infants being baptised at the time and this could suggest sex-based infanticide. Due to William James’s work it was found that things like pollution, parental disease, season of conception and parental condition do not impact the sex of the child at birth.

Since these things don’t impact the sex of the child then the baptismal records should display numbers very close to Visaria’s sex ratio. After Hynes had separated the data into rural and urban Parma and lower-class and upper-class baptisms, the sex ratio of male to female infants was shown to be skewed in each direction. After Hynes looked at the data from the Parman countryside it was found that there was a ratio of 122 male infants for every 100 female infants being baptised. This makes sense due to the fact that the rural farming towns would rather have more males who can work in the fields to harvest crops then females. Since many of the families would benefit much more from male offspring they would rely on infanticide to get rid of the females being born at the time. Having sons to help with the upkeep of farms is necessary for rural households but for urban families they do not seem to value males as highly as they would had they been living on a farm. The data from urban Parma suggests that infanticide based on sex was performed.

Over the 30-year period studied by Hynes, urban Parman baptismal records show a loss of 1,000 to 1,600 male infants which significantly skews the overall ratio to 94. 8, 20% lower then that of rural Parma. The wealthy families had an overall ratio which was in normal range while the lower-class had lower ratios. This suggests that the parents in urban Parma preferred having daughters over sons and would resort to infanticide rather then just abandoning males.