Mothers who murder

The 'bad' in Bad Mothers is facetious

When I named this newsletter Bad Mothers, it wasn’t to shame some mothers for being “bad” at parenting. Instead, the title is really meant as a wink to all women who fail in one way or another to live up to patriarchal expectations.

Even the genuinely “bad” mothers — the ones who hurt or kill their children — generally suffer from mental illness. This doesn’t completely excuse their actions, but it gives us a reason for them. It has been my impression that these mothers are few and far between, and hopefully as we destigmatize mental illness maternal filicide will be even less frequent because the mothers suffering can get the help they need.

One example of filicide was featured in The New Yorker this week. It follows Lindsay Clancy’s husband, Patrick, and how he is coping since she murdered their three young children. There is debate about whether Lindsay can legitimately claim insanity, but she was clearly in the midst of a mental health crisis and possibly postpartum psychosis. This story is tragic, and the piece carefully details the many ways in which Lindsay sought help. When we hear these stories, they are so shocking, the world is spellbound.

And yet, conservatives and anti-choice lawmakers are trying to convince us that the world is full of women who are mentally stable, but so selfish and lazy that they simply change their minds about a pregnancy in the eighth or ninth month, and just, you know, kill their baby after it is born. As we’ve seen in both the presidential and vice-presidential debates, lawmakers believe they must strip women of their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy to save babies. (Trump says he wants to “leave it to the states,” but the states are doing exactly that, anyway. Also, he’s a liar.)