“Take this child”: Why women abandon their infants in Bangladesh

http://search.proquest.com/docview/232589162?pq-origsite=summon

In this article the author discusses the reasons why women either abandon or kill their children in developing countries, especially Bangladesh. Through in-depth interviews and data analysis, Wilson (1999) not only provides statistics on infant abandonment but also finds the social pressures and emotional trauma women go through in developing countries after giving birth out out of wedlock.

Due to being chastised by social peers and disgracing their family, young mother will often give up their children to orphanages for the survival of themselves and the child. In many developing Asian countries, disgracing your family with a pregnancy/birth out of wedlock is known to result in complete abandonment of the female and her child. A young female who has been “cut off” by their family will face many extreme difficulties surviving, with a child in the picture those difficulties only multiply.