Infants (as all parents know) are endlessly fascinating, and our relationships with them are among the most important and evocative we can experience. Nonetheless, there seems a dearth of serious literature about infants. Perhaps it is because drama (dialogue) is the essence of literature and infants can't talk. Perhaps it i s because literature is a very human endeavor, and loving and caring for infants is something we share with other animals. Tolstoy (I recall) wrote several birth scenes, always from the man's perspective, and chronicled Anna's inability to fully love the child she bore with Vronsky. Literature is replete with children; infants, not so much.
Of course mythology chronicles miraculous births: Luke, for example. Hermes steals Apollo's cattle as a one-day-old baby. I've been trying to think of modern fiction in which infants play an important role. Mowgli escapes Shere Khan as an infant, and Mother Wolf's defiance of the tiger (along with Mowgli pushing his way to her breasts for a meal) makes for a great scene -- so it's not impossible to write affecting scenes about infants. Perhaps the distance European fathers maintained from infant care (along with the fact that the pen was in their hands) explains it.
My question: why is this vital portion of human life ignored by novelists (if it is), and can Litnetters point me to other famous novels featuring infants?