Study: "Moms' motives key in killings"

Submitted by anthony on Mon, 2006-11-06 18:11

Article here. Excerpt:

'It is hard to comprehend why a mother would kill her child.

It is even harder to think she might do it out of love. But that's what an Ohio study published last year indicates may be the motivation, particularly when suicide follows.

The feeling on the part of a mother that killing her child will save him or her from suffering is usually rooted in depression, Callanan said.'

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This article can be taken with the article in the UK on fathers who kill their kids, which states that men do it out of anger and a desire to control, whilst women are ill. No attempt is made to look at the reasons why some men may become angry. It also shows that it is poosibly to elicit two different reactions to an identical act, depending on your pre-conceptions of the perpetrator. I can't find details of the experiment on the web, but I read somewhere that researchers showed a 10-minute video of a crying baby to two groups of people and were asked why they thought the baby was crying. One group was told it was a boy and the other was told it was a girl. The group who thought the baby was a boy generally said "he" was angry, whilst the group who thought the baby was a girl generally said that "she" was frightened.

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Submitted by Malcolm on Tue, 2006-11-07 09:15