ABSTRACT
As we are aware from European and Latin American studies of neonaticide and infanticide, the popular perception is that only poor, uneducated, young, lower-class females commit these crimes. The American stereotype often adds non-Caucasian to the description and today has added middle-class and educated as well. Neonatal mortality is not always due to neonaticide, but Geronimus (1987) concurred with this later description, asserting that adolescent motherhood in the United States “occurs almost exclusively among socioeconomically-disadvantaged populations,” and that a large percentage of these are from the Black population (p. 245).
