Infanticide: A litmus test for feminist criminological theory

Infanticide is an important and historically prevalent crime. It is also a “female” crime. The challenge for feminist criminological theory is to account for infanticide without falling into the trap of “essentialising” the offence and its perpetrators. Two current broad feminist theoretical positions (the androgynous approach and the social control perspectives) are applied to infanticide. It is argued that their explanatory usefulness is limited since both in various ways distort the “true” dimensions of the crime. The inability of these current perspectives to account for infanticide raises serious questions about their general applicability for feminist criminological theory.