And Also Monsters
Trigger warning – Fox News link.
An Illinois mother is charged with attempted murder after attempting to poison her children and herself with anti-anxiety medication.
A commenter via Facebook objects:
Your story said a mother was arrested….may I point out that a mother wouldn’t try to kill her children, only a monster would.
And an additional protest from another:
No “human” would attempt to kill their own kids. The end.
This is an ignorant minimization of a real circumstance. Humans kill their own children fairly regularly. Mothers are also humans. A “mother” is simply a female human who has borne a child (conventionally a living child). One does not receive a “How to Be a Parent” handbook and a sainthood upon this occurrence.
Women who are shitty people with no coping skills prior to spawning are vastly likely to still be shitty people with no coping skills on the other side of the maternity ward. Women who are mentally fragile before having children are not likely to have that occurrence improve with an infant to care for. Same for fathers. Who are, incidentally, also humans.
Infants and children under the age of 6 are the cohort more likely to be killed by their parents (72% of cases), with mothers and fathers about equally likely to be the killer. Fathers are more likely to be the killers of older children, but only by about 7%. Roughly 500 children a year are murdered by their parents in the US.
All humans, not monsters.
Making this distinction where someone who is a mother cannot do such a thing, or categorizing them as something other than a mother when bad things happen denies reality.
stonesphinxes 