Twin-killing in some traditional societies: An economic perspective

Twin-killing in some traditional societies: An economic perspective. Andrés Marroquín & Colleen Haight. Journal of Bioeconomics, October 2017, October 2017, Volume 19, Issue 3, pp 261–279. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10818-017-9249-8

Abstract: Historically, some societies around the world killed newborn twins, though the practice was forsaken in the early twentieth century. Anthropologists have proposed different theses: (1) the delivery of twins occurred when the mother cheated on her husband, or committed a great sin, and killing the twins was the penalty, (2) twin-killing was done to assert that human beings were different from animals among which multiple births in the same delivery were seen, (3) twins brought a dilemma to the kinship structure of societies and to cope with it different rules were adopted, twin-killing being the extreme one, (4) twin-killing was a means to face resource stress. We argue that although those interpretations are useful, we can improve the understanding of that phenomenon by adding an identity economics model, where twins are a taboo. Identity economics helps us explain the persistence of the practice and its eventual decline. We make our case with examples from the Igbo of Nigeria.