Cheryl L. Meyer - Mothers Who Kill Their Children

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MOTHERS WHO KILL
THEIR CHILDREN

UNDERSTANDING THE ACTS OF MOMS FROM
SUSAN SMITH TO THE PROM MOM

Cheryl L. Meyer and Michelle Oberman
with
Kelly White, Michelle Rone, Priya Batra,
and Tara C. Proano

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London

2001 by New York University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyer, Cheryl L., 1959
Mothers who kill their children : understanding the acts of moms
from Susan Smith to the Prom Mom / Cheryl L. Meyer and
Michelle Oberman; with Kelly White [et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-5643-3 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8147-5644-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Filicide. 2. Infanticide. 3. Women murderers. 4. Mothers
Psychology. 5. MothersSocial conditions. I. Oberman,
Michelle. II. White, Kelly. III. Title.
HV6542 .M48 2001
364.15'23'0852dc21 2001002177

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To our mothers, and mothers everywhere,
in homage to the sheer force of will, resilience, and
eternal hope they show in undertaking to love,
in spite of all that stands in their way.

We would like to thank our partners and our families for their patience and love. Without them, this book might have been written, but it would have lacked a soul. We are also indebted to our coauthors Michelle Rone, Tara Proano, Priya Batra, and Kelly White for their long hours of research and their collaboration through the equally long process of writing and editing. We are grateful to our respective institutions, DePaul University and Wright State University, for generous support during the completion of this project. Finally, we are thankful to our editor, Jennifer Hammer, whose encouragement inspired us along the way to completion.

A Brief Cross-Cultural History of Infanticide

There is every reason to believe that infanticide is as old as human society itself, and that no culture has been immune. Throughout history, the crime of infanticide has reflected specific cultural norms and imperatives. For instance, infanticide was legal throughout the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, and was justified on grounds ranging from population control to eugenics to illegitimacy.

Historians of infanticide cite a host of factors associated with the incidence of this crime: poverty, overpopulation, laws governing inheritance, customs relating to nonmarital children, religious and/or superstitious beliefs regarding disability, eugenics, and maternal madness.of disabled or otherwise ill-fated newborns in ancient Greece, for example, and the practice of female infanticide in modern-day India.

Nonetheless, a close examination of the circumstances surrounding infanticide reveals a profound commonality linking these seemingly unrelated crimes. Specifically, infanticide may be seen as a response to the societal construction of and constraints upon mothering. Factors such as poverty, stigma, dowry, and disability are significant because they foretell the impact that an additional baby will have upon a mother, as well as upon her existing family.

Infanticide is not a random, unpredictable crime. Instead, it is deeply imbedded in and is a reflection of the societies in which it occurs. The crime of infanticide is committed by mothers who cannot parent their child under the circumstances dictated by their unique position in place and time. These circumstances vary, but the extent to which infanticide is a reflection of the norms governing motherhood is a constant that links seemingly disparate crimes.

Nonetheless, even a cursory survey of cases involving women who kill their children reveals enormous variation in the circumstances surrounding these crimes. However, there is very little systematic research that identifies the patterns associated with such killings. This book sets out to identify clear distinctions among the cases of contemporary women who kill their children, shedding light on why some women commit such acts and what intervention strategies might be helpful in preventing the deaths of other children in the future.

We begin with a historical survey, for it is our belief that if we are to make sense of the persistence of infanticide in contemporary society we must understand the manner in which cultural norms have shaped this crime throughout history. Toward that end, this chapter provides a brief chronological review of the sociocultural imperatives underlying the crime of infanticide in various cultures. We do not seek to provide a comprehensive record of the crime of infanticide. Rather, we wish to illustrate the intricate relationship between a societys construction of parenthood and mothering, and its experience of infanticide.

Anthropologists maintain that prehistoric societies routinely practiced infanticide. The killing of newborns was a means of minimizing the strain on societies with limited resources. Thus, according to anthropologists, disabled or sickly children were particularly at risk of infanticide, as were female children who were viewed as a source of future population growth. Over time, civilizations emerged. An examination of their histories reveals the cultural norms that shaped their varying practices of infanticide. Several civilizations have particularly well-documented histories of infanticide, which illustrate how the prevalence of infanticide may be driven by the sociocultural construction of motherhood.

The earliest mention of infanticide in recorded history relates to disabled newborns, and was committed almost exclusively by fathers rather than mothers. Records from the Babylonian and Chaldean civilizations, dating from approximately 4000 to 2000 B.C., refer to disabled newborns as signs or omens from the gods and prescribe the manner of interpreting and responding to these infants births. Interestingly, these societies saw disabled children as omens of good or bad things to come, but they did not necessarily kill them.

Under Roman law fathers exercised absolute rule and the state had no jurisdiction over domestic affairs. Thus, infanticide of bastards, females, or excess children was rarely questioned by the authorities; it was merely part of the patria potens, the rights of the head of household.

Prior to the advent of Islam in seventh-century Arabia, men possessed women as they would possess any other property. As a result, they were completely dependent upon their male relatives. To spare their child a life of misery, mothers frequently disposed of their female babies.