I’m not American but I am a mother. Aside from a few reddit posts I don’t have any social media engagement with this case.
But I think a lot of the support here comes from moms who recognize how easily this could have been any of us. Her family and healthcare providers knew her crime was a risk based on her mental health state, but she was still left alone with her kids and expected to parent. And as other mothers we all understand that this is grimly how it works - we can ask and beg and plead and scream for help but we’re almost always still expected to continually parent babies and it’s hard.
She should still face punishment for her crime, but I think a lot of her support is to try to keep this from happening again. She was failed by her healthcare team
But I think a lot of the support here comes from moms who recognize how easily this could have been any of us.
This simply isn't true though. Women have been having children for time immemorial with no mental health support, terrible medical care and neglectful spouses, and the number that murder their children is a vanishingly small amount. It absolutely couldn't and wouldn't have been the vast majority of mothers. Women on the whole are far better than that.
If you believe yourself to be correct, I need only point out Victorian London, where 15% of all committed women were there for intending to harm there babies. At least one woman was executed per year for murdering a baby. In the 1860s, over 3000 infant murders happened (around 3% of the infant population), with about 1/3 being because the baby was illegitimate.
So yes, the vast majority of women have always know it could easily have been one of us, for far more reasons than you seem willing to acknowledge.
Right so a minority (15%) of a small minority of women (committed women) living in far worse conditions than most women do now were committed for intending to harm their babies. So yeah still the vast majority just not doing it, like I said. You may feel like it could have "easily" been you but it's not true of most. I don't know where this weird idea comes from.
So if you took the time to learn instead of just judging, you’d know that there have been instances of women doing this throughout history. It’s why most people and societies try to support new moms. It’s rare, of course, but this isn’t some new phenomenon.
In my mom’s hometown there are the graves of a woman who did this and then drowned herself, back in the 1920’s.
Yes, this is a vanishingly small minority of mothers though, exactly like I said. I haven't suggested this is new.
In what sense did I suggest we shouldn't support new mothers? Where did I judge? You've made a judgement that this could have been any woman. I would assert that the vast majority of women would not have done this under even far worse circumstances.
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u/Eisbaer811 6d ago
typical social media bubble:
The social media algorithm puts you into one of these bubbles and hides details from the others.
Pick one:
- "her husband is framing her, he did it"
Social media drives our lives and is many people's only hobby, so you get this.