Custom behind dumped babies’ bodies

A RURAL tradition of abandoning dead children may have played a part in the case of the 21 babies’ bodies found in a Chinese river.

Police arrested two mortuary workers from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University in Shandong province who were paid by the babies’ families to dispose of the bodies. The babies have since been cremated.

Hospital procedures normally call for families to take away the bodies of their dead infants. However, among some rural families the death of a young child is considered bad luck and the body is often abandoned or buried in an unmarked grave.

“According to customs in some places, dead infants are not considered to be a family member and will not be buried in family tombs,” said Prof Cao Yongfu of the Medical Ethic Institute of Shandong University.

Some families would rather leave the body at the hospital or pay someone to bury it, said Ma Guanghai, deputy dean at Shandong University’s School of Philosophy and Social Development. Some local customs go even further. When a baby dies, the family burns its clothes, toys and photos – anything that would remind them the child ever existed. The traditions stem from China’s agrarian past, where child deaths were common, and not considered something to dwell on.