Collection of books related to infant abandonment, adoption, neglect, abuse, and infanticide.
Ashby, LeRoy. Endangered Children: Dependency, Neglect and Abuse in American History. Twayne Pub., 1997.
Boswell, John. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. The U. of Chicago Press, 1988.
Fuchs, Rachel G. Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in 19th Century France. SUNY Press, 1984.
Gager, Kristin Elizabeth. Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France. Princeton U. Press, 1996.
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection. Pantheon Books, 1999.
Kertzer, David I. Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control. Beacon Press, 1993.
Lewis, Clara S. American Infanticide: Sexism, Science, and the Politics of Sympathy, Rutgers University Press, 2025 (release date: June 17 2025)
Littlejohn, Krystale and Rickie Solinger, Fighting Mad: Resisting the End of Roe v Wade, UC Press, 2024 (includes SH.SHBB material)
Meyer, Cheryl and Michelle Oberman. Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the “Prom Mom.” New York U. Press, 2001.
Miller, Julie. Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City, New York U. Press, 2008.
Oaks, Laury. Giving Up Baby: Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, and Reproductive Justice. New York University Press, 2015.
Panter-Brick, Catharine and Malcolm T. Smith (Editors). Abandoned Children. Cambridge U. Press, 2000.
Piers, Maria W. Infanticide: Past and Present. W. W. Norton, 1978.
Ransel, David. Mothers in Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia. Princeton U. Press, 1988.
Rose, Lionel. The Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain, 1800-1939. Routledge, 1986.
Schwartz, Lita L and Natalie K. Isser. Endangered Children: Neonatice, Infanticide and Filicide. CRC Press, 2000.
Sisson, Gretchen. Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Priviledge of American Motherhood, MacMillan, 2024
Spinelli, Margret G. Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives on Mothers Who Kill. Arlington, VA: Amer Psychiatric. 2002.
Updated: March 13, 2025