Filicide:: A review

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Introduction

The killing of a child by a parent is a rare but profoundly disturbing event. Police, clinicians, social workers, and the public struggle to understand how such a thing could happen. There is, however, a considerable literature on the subject from a range of disciplines and perspectives. This paper is a descriptive review of the empirical literature in order to consider how it can contribute to making sense of filicide and identify future research directions. Depth of coverage of studies was allocated on population studies or those with a unique contribution to the literature. Studies were accessed through Medline, Psychlit, and Current Contents searches using the terms “filicide” and “infanticide.” Cited published work not otherwise generated in the search was also sought.

The paper first considers general features of child murder, followed by examination of maternal filicide, paternal filicide, and related issues such as death by neglect and murder misidentified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Issues towards formulation are considered followed by a brief section on future directions. “Filicide” is used as a generic term describing the killing of children by their parents, including step-parents. It encompasses neonaticide, infanticide, and filicide.

Section snippets

Sociocultural considerations

Attitudes to filicide vary greatly through time and cultural context. In ancient Rome, the right of a father to kill his own children was protected Black, 1979, Finkel et al., 2001. Disproportionate value placed on male rather than female offspring in countries such as China, Fiji, and India have led to female infanticide and feticide on a scale which may be far greater than official figures suggest Adinkrah, 2000, Judson, 1994, Kumar, 1995. Physical and cultural constraints lead to

Other forms of fatal maltreatment

It is argued that between one-fifth and one-tenth of early childhood deaths currently described as SIDS are not due to natural causes (Emery, 1993). Meadow (1999) described the clinical features of 81 cases of murder misidentified as SIDS and described a history of unusual or unexplained medical events rather than reports of suspected abuse or neglect. Covert video recordings have been made of parents deliberately engaging in life-threatening child abuse while their children were in hospital

Means of filicide and disposition of offenders

Means used to kill the children are less violent than in murder in general, with babies killed in the first 24 hours usually by neglect or accident Marks & Kumar, 1993, Resnick, 1970. Mendlowicz et al. (1999) described an exception to this in a series of neonaticides in Brazil where 77.4% were killed through wounding violence. Female offenders rarely used weapons with frequent use of less violent means such as drowning or suffocation, with banging, hitting, or throwing also being common Cheung,

Towards a formulation of maternal filicide

The most uniform and clearly delineated group is the neonaticides. Marks (1996) described a process occurring in young uneducated women who had exercised such powerful denial of an unwanted pregnancy that it seemed to influence the perceptions of the people around them and attenuate the biological manifestations of pregnancy. The arrival of the baby was then experienced as a traumatic shock confronting the woman with the fear, which motivated the denial. The resulting anxiety was of such

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      In the literature, we see that researchers go to great lengths to explain how perpetrators of filicide in general fail to represent their children qua their children, thus explaining why parenting norms seem to play no role in the mind of the killer, or how the act of murder fits with the perpetrators (sometimes psychotic) world view and is consistent with them loving their children, treating them as in-group members and trying to do what is best for them. Indeed, the parent who kills their child(ren) as part of an extended suicide is taken to treat their victims as so strongly in-group to be effectively an extension of their self (Stanton & Simpson, 2002). This kind of thinking is evidenced by suicide notes in which a parent declares that they cannot leave their children behind without them (e.g., "I just can't live without you and I couldn't leave my kids behind," Messing and Heeren, 2004 p. 153; "bury us together in one box, please.

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