No, the practice of infanticide by the Aborigines of Australia does not indicate that they do not care about their young. Rev. George Taplin in his account of the Narrinyeri states that a child permitted to live “is brought up with great care, more than generally falls to the lot of children of the poorer class of Europeans.” The community worked together to soothe the child, passing it from person to person to be caressed, with the father frequently nursing it for several hours together.
According to Richard Sadleir in The Aborigines of Australia, women would retire for seclusion during confinement, attended by other women. Following the birth, the husband would personally attend to his wife and would often take on the role of nursing the infant himself. A child that was spared was then “most affectionately watched over.”
This paradox is further confirmed by George Bennett in Wanderings in New South Wales…, who notes that although “addicted to infanticide,” they displayed in other instances “an extraordinary degree of affection for their dead offspring.” He describes this affection as being evidenced by acts of grief that “almost exceed credibility,” acts which were nevertheless witnessed repeatedly among the tribes.