Why Mothers Kill Their Children: Causes and Prevention

Introduction: The Unnatural Act of Maternal Infanticide

On January 27th of that year, Julie Powers, a 50-year-old mother from Tampa, Florida, shot her two teenage children to death. When asked by police for an explanation, she replied that she killed her children because they were "mouthy" (Szalavitz 2011). Such a response shocks us — not only because it violates our biological impulse to care for our species, but also because it denies the long-standing social and cultural tradition that defines mothers as the embodiment of our protective and nurturing nature. What, then, could prompt Powers and other mothers to turn against their own instincts and others' expectations, murdering those whose health and safety they are meant to protect?

In order to find an answer, we must first dismantle a prejudice that often plagues attempts to explain the motives of women: the reluctance to credit — or blame — them for their actions. In her book Women Who Kill (2009), Ann Jones points out that "historians often assume that women have not significantly acted, but have been acted upon." Such a prejudice can infiltrate cases of maternal infanticide from the very beginning.

Cultural Stereotypes and the Susan Smith Case

When Susan Smith drowned her two sons on October 25, 1994, she concocted a terrifying story that the media immediately believed and circulated: that a black man had hijacked her car with her two young boys still inside. The story led to a nine-day manhunt for the suspect she described. Inconsistencies in her account led police to suspect foul play on her part, and she subsequently failed three lie detector tests. On November 3rd, she finally confessed, writing that she had planned to commit suicide by driving her car into a lake, but at the last minute she got out and let the car sink with her two sons inside (Rekers 1996). Her family, her friends, the media, and the nation in general were shocked and outraged.

Smith had successfully portrayed herself as a victim — at least initially. She played on the age-old stereotype of women being victimized by men, and the more virulent stereotype of white women being victimized by black men. Because these stereotypes are so deeply entrenched in American culture, her family and the media had no difficulty believing the story without second-guessing it. It seemed more likely to everyone that a black man would commit a violent crime against a white woman and her children than that a mother would drive her own children into a lake. But the statistics tell another story. According to the Department of Justice, 88% of children who are murdered die at the hands of their own parents. In 55% of these cases, the mother is the murderer (Rekers 1996, p. 120).

After Smith abandoned her tale of victimization, she and her defense attorneys developed a different narrative: they portrayed her as a victim of mental illness — specifically, depression. This "medical victim" explanation for mothers killing their children was a unique product of the twentieth century. Cheryl Meyer (2001) points out that, before the beginning of the twentieth century, "the Judeo-Christian world seems to have understood infanticide as a crime committed by desperate and/or immoral women" (p. 10). The discovery in the late nineteenth century of the connection between pregnancy, birth, and maternal mental illness opened the door for a more sophisticated approach to understanding infanticide.

Postpartum Mental Illness as a Factor

England in particular took the mental illness model very seriously. In 1922, the British Infanticide Act was passed, making it impossible to charge a mother who kills her child with any crime higher than manslaughter if she can prove she was suffering from postpartum depression (Meyer 2001, p. 11). The law is not as clear-cut in America, however. While postpartum depression is generally not accepted as a complete legal defense against maternal infanticide, the more severe diagnosis of postpartum psychosis is often considered a mitigating factor.

Postpartum psychosis differs from postpartum depression in that it usually involves a "dramatic break with reality" (Meyer 2001). Women suffering from postpartum psychosis often experience visual or auditory hallucinations; some of these hallucinations may urge the woman to kill her child or children. In Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives on Mothers Who Kill (Spinelli 2003), Wisner et al. describe the case of a 38-year-old mother of two who suffered severe postpartum psychosis after the birth of her second child. Outwardly, the woman was calm, relaxed, and well-spoken. But she described being haunted by a "dark shadow" that would take over her limbs, at one point forcing her to try to strangle her infant. To avoid this "shadow," the mother would pace back and forth on the porch all day — in the middle of winter — with both of her children. Fortunately, she sought treatment before this delusion prompted her to commit a serious crime, but other women have not received treatment in time, with disastrous consequences.

The most well-known case of postpartum psychosis resulting in infanticide is the case of Andrea Yates, a mother of five who systematically drowned her five children one by one in the family bathtub in 2001. Yates had a documented history of postpartum depression and psychosis. After her fourth child was born, she twice attempted suicide and was hospitalized. Despite doctors warning her and her husband that future pregnancies would doubtlessly lead to future psychoses, the couple had a fifth child. A few months after the birth of their last child, Andrea became deeply psychotic and suicidal. Convinced that Satan was out to torment her children and that the only way to protect them was to send them to Heaven, she drowned them, laid their bodies on the bed, and called the police.

Works Cited

Child Abuse Prevention Network. http://child-abuse.com/. Accessed 1 February 2011.

Jones, A. (2009). Women Who Kill. New York: The Feminist Press of the City College of New York.

Meyer, C., Oberman, M., and White, K. (2001). Mothers Who Kill Their Children. New York: NYU Press.

National Council for the Prosecution of Child Abuse. Accessed 1 February 2011.

Rekers, G. (1996). Susan Smith: Victim or Murderer. Lakewood, CO: Glenbridge Publishing.

Spinelli, M. (2003). Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives on Mothers Who Kill. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Szalavitz, M. (Feb. 1, 2011). "Psychiatrist Phillip Resnick on Why Parents Kill Their Own Kids." Time.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/index.html. Accessed 1 February 2011.