Fatal Maternity: What is filicide?
An introduction to a criminal psychology series exploring why mothers kill their children
Mothers who kill their children are gawked upon by society as many female killers are; with a mix of awe, disgust, and indignation that anyone could harm a child, especially their own. Is she crazy? Cold-hearted? Spiteful? A monster? On drugs? Why did she do it?
Maternal and paternal filicide can look strikingly different from each other. As always, men and women murder for reasons that differ wildly. Men are more likely to become a family annihilator, murdering both his wife and children, and sometimes committing suicide. Women are more likely to kill the children and then herself, but not her spouse. According to a 1988 Special Report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a third of family murders is committed by or involved a female killer. The report adds that:
“In murders of their offspring, women predominated, accounting for 55% of killers.”
And yet, many issues, both personal and societal, contribute to this. A study titled “Child murder by mothers: patterns and prevention” by Susan Hatters Friedman and Phillip J. Resnick (director of forensic psychiatry at Case Western), observes that: “The mothers were often poor, socially isolated, full-time caregivers, who were victims of domestic violence or had other relationship problems.”
Among developed nations, the United States has the highest rates of filicide. Lack of universal health care, inaccessibility to abortion in many areas, mental health stigmas, inability to access care, and domestic violence rates likely account for some of this.
“The strongest predictive factors of maternal child homicide are maternal age of 19 years or younger, education of 12 years or less, single marital status, and late or absent prenatal care.” (Overpeck et al., 1998).
Postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are real and concerning conditions, which could become dangerous for the mother and her child if left untreated. Postpartum depression is more severe and long lasting than the typical baby blues a new mother may experience, according to the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms can develop during pregnancy and long as last as the first year after birth. Severe mood swings, excessive crying, social withdrawal, feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt, thoughts of self harm or suicide, or thoughts of harming the baby, are all concerning symptoms of this depression.
A more rare condition, postpartum psychosis, typically begins within the first week following the child’s birth. These symptoms are more severe than the depression counterpart, including disorientation, obsessive thoughts about the baby, hallucinations or delusions, sleep disturbance, excessive energy or agitation, paranoia, and attempts to harm herself and the baby.
Hatter and Renwick note that over a third of filicides happen during pregnancy or the first postpartum year. Dr. McKee, a clinical professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, writes on deathpenaltyinfo.org, that many of these mothers had a history of serious or clinical depression.
“Dr. McKee cites a report that up to 75 percent of mothers who murdered their children had psychiatric symptoms before the killing, and up to 40 percent had been seen by a psychiatrist shortly before the killing.” (deathpenaltyinfo.org)
He goes on to add that being hospitalized for psychosis is twenty-five times higher among women in the first thirty days, and fourteen times higher in the first ninety days after childbirth. Of course, women who are mentally ill carry stigmas and the cruel mockery of people who don’t understand such issues. How many women have been labelled as crazy, psycho, lunatic, monster, or much worse, because of her erratic behaviour due to untreated mental problems?
Many of us witnessed the incredibly public breakdown of Britney Spears in 2007 – and many laughed at her instead of worrying what was happening behind the scenes. Even now, with the conservatorship ended, one only has to scroll through the comments on her Instagram posts to see words like “lunatic” or “crazy” pop up, along with the assumptions that she will no doubt lose her mind again. Her comments are actually now turned off completely. Take that behaviour she exhibited, and give it to a woman who is socially isolated, financially desperate, recently gave birth, and stressed to the max with untreated mental illness and relationship problems, and it’s a recipe for tragedy.
From the start, mothers are under immense pressure to automatically know by some magical motherly instinct what her child needs and wants. This is a dangerous idea that can only make an already mentally unwell woman feel even more unworthy of her child and push her to the brink. It makes it more difficult to reach out for help, out of fear of being viewed as a failure. Women are not psychics. Child birth is not a magical occurrence in which a woman is endowed with some miraculous maternal instinct.
Back on topic: Phillip J. Resnick, after reviewing 131 cases of maternal filicide, created a classification system based on motives to explain why mothers might murder their young. Before we get into that, there are a few distinctions to be made when breaking down this shocking act. Filicide is the act of killing one’s son or daughter. Resnick created the term neonaticide to describe the murder of one’s infant within the first twenty-four hours of life. Infanticide is the murder of a child within the first year of life. This distinction has caused great controversy over infanticide laws in several countries, which we will also look at later on. For now, onward to Resnick’s classifications. Each post of this series will look at one of these in depth, and we’ll take a glimpse into some real cases.
Resnick’s Classifications
Altruistic Filicide
Sometimes a desperate mother decides that she cannot keep her children in a world of suffering and pain. Murder seems like a drastic measure but in pits of despair, desperation, suicidal thoughts, and severe mental illness, it becomes less of a stretch. Many of these mothers are already suicidal. Resnick states that almost half of filicidal acts can be categorized under this title. There are two subgroups that accompany this category:
Filicide associated with suicide
A suicidal mother may come to the final decision to kill herself, and take her children with her, believing she can’t abandon them. She kills them to keep them from suffering a life without her. The mother may also believe her children are an extension of her herself, and that when she is miserable and in pain, so are they.
Filicide to relieve pain or suffering
Whether the child’s suffering is real or imagined, a mother may kill her offspring to alleviate their agony. According to Resnick, this could be “based on a delusional perception that a child is suffering or at risk of going to hell.”
Acutely Psychotic Filicide
A designation given when there is no clear or comprehensive motive. These mothers may have killed while under the influence of hallucinations, delirium, or epilepsy. This often overlaps with the altruistic classification.
Unwanted Child
Those truly disturbing incidents where a parent kills their child because they no longer want them. We saw this prevalent with Mary Ann Cotton, a Victorian woman who rejected the era’s expectations that women marry and have children to be emotionally fulfilled (I have a series on her as well, which I will post soon.) According to Renwick, this is the most common reason newborns are murdered. A child’s illegitimacy, a parent’s disorder, or the child being a social or financial burden are common motives that fall under this category.
Child Maltreatment
Resnick originally wrote that this is the only category in which the parent doesn’t intend to kill their child. This comes about as a result of over-disciplining the child, resulting in an unintentional death. The mother may have gotten overwhelmed and angry at an infant who wouldn’t stop crying, or other undesirable behaviours.
However, I think by today’s standards, we can fit child abuse into this category. His original study was done at a time when how a parent disciplined their child was kept to the home and abuse wasn’t talked about outside of those walls. The way we view abuse and child discipline has changed drastically, and as such, I think this category is deserving of the appropriate update. Abusive parents may not intend to kill their child in some instances, but some definitely do. And we will explore this.
Spousal Revenge
Pretty self explanatory, but equally horrifying. A parent could kill their children as an act of defiance to make their spouse/ex-spouse suffer.
Final thoughts
According to a 1999 study by Lewis and Resnick, the most common methods mothers use to kill their infants are battering, smothering, strangling, and drowning. Mothers stay true to the female killer profile in maintaining a clean crime scene, more likely to use their hands or feet than they are with weapons like guns or knives, the exception being older children, perhaps because they are less helpless and more likely to fight back or run away. Fathers who commit filicide are more likely to use weapons and leave a blood-soaked crime scene.
In addition to reviewing the classifications one-by-one and looking at cases, I’ll discuss the controversial infanticide laws, and end this series with a glimpse into how these mothers are rehabilitated in the aftermath of these murders, and how mental breakdowns, if that was the cause, don’t need to define these women forever. We’ll compare them with the women who used their children’s lives for revenge or spiteful motives.
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Sources
Child murder by mothers: patterns and prevention by Susan Hatters Friedman and Philip J. Resnick
Resnick JP. Filicide in the United States. Indian J Psychiatry (2016)