WHY MOTHERS WHO KILL THEIR CHILDREN

Mothers Who Kill Their Children

Why mothers who kill their children get off easier than fathers who do

The only thing that is really unique about Andrea Yates in Texas is that people are paying attention to her case. They didn't pay attention when Andrea repeatedly voiced her symptoms of depression. Moreover, most people barely note the hundreds of news stories that appear each year about mothers who kill their children. So why is our attention riveted upon Andrea Yates?

Clearly it is unusual when a woman kills more than one child, especially five, but it has happened before. Ophilia Yip, a Chinese immigrant, drove the family van off a pier into the Los Angeles Harbor killing herself and her four children in 1991, but that case received little media attention.

In fact, we found several thousand cases from 1990 to 1999 involving mothers who killed their children, and we researched over 200 of them. Approximately 10 percent of these women had killed more than one child. However, other than Susan Smith, who drowned her two small sons in Union, S.C., most people would find it difficult to name another one of these mothers. So why do Susan Smith and Andrea Yates rivet our attention?

Perhaps the best way to determine why we are paying attention is to review other mothers who have captured public attention in the last decade. Three women quickly come to mind: Melissa Drexler, aka the New Jersey "prom mom"; Amy Grossberg, who, with her boyfriend, killed their newborn in a Delaware motel; and Debora Green, the physician in Kansas City who attempted to kill her three children and succeeded in killing two of them. Melissa Drexler and Amy Grossberg committed neonaticide, killing a child within 24 hours of giving birth. Approximately one-third of the cases we reviewed were cases of neonaticide. Yet again, few cases made national news.

The one thing the women who made national news did have in common was that they seemed unlikely candidates to kill their children. They did not fit the stereotype of a woman who would kill her child. What is that unspoken stereotype? A woman who is "mad" or insane, a woman who is "bad" or evil, a woman who is economically underprivileged or a woman of color. Andrea Yates in Texas confuses us and captures our attention. We don't ask why she did it when a woman who fits our stereotype commits the crime of infanticide; we only ask why when white middle class mothers kill their children.

The reality is that the mother who kills her child is every mother, any mother.

Research Indicates Many Mothers 'Almost Snap'

My research will be published in August in "Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Mothers From Susan Smith to the 'Prom Mom,'" from New York University Press. While we were conducting research, countless mothers approached us with unsolicited tales about how they "almost snapped." These ranged from stories relating a moment of frustration in which mothers were able to ...