The Biologically Vulnerable Boy

Framing Sex Differences in Childhood Infectious Disease Mortality

in Boyhood Studies
Author:
Heather T. Battles University of Auckland h.battles@auckland.ac.nz

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/bhs.2016.090205
Keywords:
child mortalityz; children and childhood; demography; diphtheria; excess male mortality; gender; sex differences
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ABSTRACT

Demographers have noticed longer adult female life expectancies and higher rates of male infant mortality in Europe as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the Western demographic and epidemiologic transition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, infant and childhood mortality rates became increasingly male-skewed. I examine the changing awareness and understanding of sex differentials in childhood infectious disease mortality and the discourse surrounding them in the medical and epidemiological literature, with particular focus on discussions surrounding diphtheria. I identify the emergence of the concept of males as the weaker sex (the “biological hypothesis”) and the framing of boys as biologically vulnerable, and argue that these are products of this historical period, linked not only to observed epidemiological patterns but also to changing ideas of children and childhood and the shift in science and medicine toward the laboratory as the source of knowledge.

Contributor Notes

Heather T. Battles is a Lecturer in biological anthropology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. Her research examines historical patterns of infectious disease in the context of demographic and epidemiological transition, with a focus on children and childhood. Recent and current projects examine diphtheria and polio mortality in Canada and New Zealand. Email: h.battles@auckland.ac.nz

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Boyhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

Cover Boyhood Studies
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
17
Keywords:
child mortalityz; children and childhood; demography; diphtheria; excess male mortality; gender; sex differences
Print Publication Date:
01 Sep 2016
Online Publication Date:
01 Sep 2016
Copyright:
© Berghahn Books 2016

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