Tuscans and their Families
This is just unbelievable…I’m sitting in the library reading this and exclaiming aloud as I do. People must think I’m insane. But read this:
Prevailing attitudes toward children, of both sexes, also led to oversight and confusion. Adults tended to ignore, neglect, and forget their offspring; infants in early life possessed a kind of transparency. It may be that their slim chances for survival prompted adults to keep a certain distance from their infants, to avoid cementing emotional attachments with them until their chances of survival susbtantially improved. Moreover, it is probable that the scant value accorded female babies multiplied the instances of simple oversight. The underreporting of female infants may thus be futher evidence of the negligence or indifference with which a father of this epoch regarded his daughter. Herihy and Klapish-Zuber, Tuscans and their familes
You see what I have to work with? Sheeesh.