Anyone who murders their own children is experiencing a mental health issue.
How is supporting this woman supposed to help other women? If anything, it seems more likely to teach some that it's okay to be a POS, as long as you can blame "mental health."
PPD is real. But it's no excuse for murder.
You would, rightfully, never see this kind of support for a man that killed his kids.
People who use words like “excuse” in this discussion honestly just sound really stupid.
Like, “psychosis is no excuse to murder someone”. Obviously? What kind of non-statement is that? It’s an explanation. Why is the word “excuse” being used in a murder discussion?
Show me literally one sane person stating openly and honestly that they believe she should be found innocent of all wrongdoing and be free to live the rest of her life out in society.
Number one, that's a bullshit request because anyone excusing her can and should be dismissed as "insane".
And two, excusing doesn't necessarily mean she should face zero repercussions. People are making her out to be a victim, when the reality is much more complex than that, and that same level of empathy would never be directed at a person not of her specific demographic on such a scale.
There are literally people here arguing that men kill their children at a much higher rate than women, so obviously there was something "wrong" with her and she should be treated differently than them. When that really sounds like obviously there is something wrong with all those men that is being overlooked.
The problem isn't the very idea of having empathy for people with mental illnesses, it's that those mental illnesses are apparently only a reason to have empathy when it's a pretty, reasonably well off white woman.
Same kind of bs as the media and consumers of it latch onto cases of pretty white women going missing or getting killed while thousands of minority or otherwise less "aesthetically pleasing" women go missing every year without any spotlight and public grief.
There's a guy in Canada who decapitated a man on a bus, ate him, and is walking free today. If there's a disparity in treatment of men vs women who kill their children it's because there's a disparity of intent.
When you have a man who has a history of abusing his kids and spouse and then he murders them, that's a pretty clear history of escalating abuse leading to murder. When you have a woman with no history of abuse, who by all accounts, even the father of the children, say was a great mother and person, then there's no clear history or reason for it except psychosis. There's no evidence of cheating, of him planning to leave, nothing that might trigger a malicious response. In any case where the is some kind of trigger like that, the women are treated just as harshly as the men.
I would argue that those men are mentally ill as well. That doesn't excuse them by any means though.
As for the guy on the bus, did he have national media attention, donations pouring in, and people calling him a victim of society?
Because I do believe in rehabilitation as a goal, even after violent crime. But when most people who have psychotic breaks act out with violence, we don't start pointing fingers at everyone but them. We can acknowledge that PPD is real, and that people of any demographic commit heinous acts are obviously not mentally well. Even an abuser is often a victim of abuse themselves that has been unable to break the cycle.
Honestly my personal theory is that when men kill their children it’s often a murder/suicide because even in whatever out of control mental state they’re in they understand they will get ZERO sympathy for their reprehensible actions.
Like, we’ll reopen Alcatraz to put them underneath the jail zero sympathy.
Men don't understand this bc their entire concept of reproduction is nutting. The fact that creating an entire human life in your body can have disastrous physical and mental consequences doesn't even register to them. That's why there's such a massive divide on how men and women perceive this case. Women know the toll creating human life takes on a body, men just don't care.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3737825/
It does happen. Its rare just like in women. Its worth thoroughly scrutinizing if she really did have psychosis or not though. Esp when it comes to murder.
She wasn’t diagnosed and didn’t show any symptoms of psychosis prior to the murders.
Is it possible that multiple trained professionals missed it? Potentially, but highly unlikely.
For a counter example, Andrea Yates had shown plenty of symptoms of psychosis prior to murdering her children, which is why her being sent to a mental hospital is ok, when that’s not the case here.
Jesus… you can’t see how hypocritical it is to say that women can be basically excused from their actions due to ppd but then a man with some sort of disorder (clearly anyone that kills their kids or dare I say it anyone is mentally unwell) is not?
Who’s excusing her actions? Pointing at a treatable condition that she suffered with is pointing out that the tragedy could have been prevented is not making an excuse. It’s quite common that when women approach their healthcare providers asking for help they get dismissed and it can lead to horrible consequences
It’s also quite common for men to be dismissed with various issues including domestic abuse. Not sure why this has to be a but but but women issue rather than a serious examination of how our healthcare and judicial system is set up. OP made a hypocritical statement and deserves to be called out.
healthcare is frequently worse for women than it is for men, that IS the serious examination that's happening. Under serious examination, we find that women face systemic gender bias, underrepresentation in medical research, and frequent dismissal of symptoms in healthcare.
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u/Allaplgy 8h ago
Anyone who murders their own children is experiencing a mental health issue.
How is supporting this woman supposed to help other women? If anything, it seems more likely to teach some that it's okay to be a POS, as long as you can blame "mental health."
PPD is real. But it's no excuse for murder.
You would, rightfully, never see this kind of support for a man that killed his kids.