You covered this with more nuance than I've read elsewhere. Thank you.
There seems to be two basic groups. The "err on the side of mercy" group wants to believe that people are basically good but sometimes come under the influence of forces outside of their control that break them. The "cast the first stone" group wants to believe we maintain complete personal agency no matter what factors are involved. Both beliefs may just be comforting human illusions. Whichever belief we adopt seems to depend upon our own brand of self-righteousness, existential insecurity, and/or current echo chamber.
So many people are ready with their verdict. But I don't envy the actual jury. What a difficult decision to have to make.
I have been struggling how to balance my agreement that postpartum is a serious problem with my nagging belief that she should be held accountable for killing her children.
I really haven’t given much thought to this case. I did however watch a recent California Insider news episode covering the CA program for crime victims compensation. Program administrators are giving program benefits to convicted criminals based on the idea that only prior victimization could drive one to commit violent crime. In a biased search for a glass half-empty; activists mine a criminal’s history for incidents to support such a claim. We all witnessed the “Only prior victimization could drive such violence” alibi invoked to rationalize the Oct 7 attack against Israel.
I'm a lifelong feminist and left-leaning liberal; women and women's issues have always been central to my life. I, like most women, am appalled by Lindsay Clancy's killing of her children and weep for the loss of their young lives. In the discussions of postpartum psychosis (and I note most scholars weighing in here were men), there is seldom historical data presented. In fiction as in Morrison's Beloved, the harrowing story of an enslaved woman who killed her daughter so she would not fall into the hands of enslavers, we understand the mother's reasons, even as we recoil in horror at the act. I am not familiar with historical examples of mothers killing their children, although it must have happened. In recent cases of women committing this nightmare of a crime, we read conflicting diagnoses: usually mental disorders, separate from or caused by hormonal/ biological changes. However, the social aspects fascinate me bringing me more questions.
The intense pronatalism in our culture, the focus on the expected expert, continual self-denying caretaking by women (as usual, the responsibilities of father figures are ignored) seems to me to create a state of motherhood that is quite simply unattainable. Why are women alone supposed to live up the self-sacrificing ideal? Even if they seek help, they are made to seem aberrant for not just getting on with their twenty-four-hour caretaking. Furthermore, some women who have experienced postpartum depression, even psychosis, after the first pregnancy, are expected to snap out of it. Sometimes, unbelievably, they choose to become pregnant and repeat the process despite the dismal first go round. Have women become complicit in accepting this dubious and dangerous version of motherhood? Who is colluding in it? Who benefits from their misery? I'd like to see more women reject this idealized version of womanhood and rebel. I chose not to bear a child and never regretted that decision, but my heart goes out to women who, for whatever reasons, became pregnant and found themselves desolate and alone. Not all of these women commit murder, and I don't feel qualified to weigh in on this case. But isn't it time to reevaluate our expectations of all women who become mothers?
You chose not to have kids, so your own assessment that you "don't feel qualified to weigh in" is accurate.
For those of us who did decide to have children, we (both mothers AND fathers) make sacrifices and adjust our lives to care for those children. We find an untapped well-spring of strength to persevere in the face of challenging circumstances because of the weight of responsibility we have to protect those precious little children who need us.
I'm sorry, but this Lindsay Clancy case doesn't fit your self-professed feminist left-leaning liberal ideological narrative. Lindsay had more support and more access to support than 99.5% of women. She was a labor and delivery nurse. So not only was she eminently qualified professionally to fully understand her situation but she also had full access to peers and clinical support programs specifically built to help women in her situation.
Isolated and alone? Her inlaws were helping with childcare. Her husband had used his paternity leave to stay home and help with childcare. He shifted his job to work from home and help with childcare. They had the money to hire a nanny to help with childcare. They only discontinued the nanny's services when they decided [together] to discontinue the nanny's contract so Lindsay could stay home with the kids, a situation many women wish they could afford but can't.
You need numbers? This article itself provides them. Postpartum psychosis is experienced by 1-2 in a thousand women (0.2%), and of that 0.2% only about 4-5% commit fillicide. So 4-5% of 0.2% is one in ten thousand women. And of the 5 clinicians (FIVE, how's that for support?) providing her medical care, not a single one thought her symptoms merited diagnosis as postpartum psychosis or bipolar. The question is do we "trust the science"/"trust the experts" or not? The only finding of psychosis was provided by the psychologist hired by her lawyer. Seriously? And even that hinged on their assertion after the murders of a single command hallucination; one that she hasn't experienced before or since.
Come on. How credulous do people have to be? And she wasn't even reliably taking the medications they were prescribing. Did she think she knew better than her doctors? Especially as a nurse, she should have known better than anyone to trust her care team and follow the care plan. As a labor and delivery nurse, why didn't she immediately share with her providers the moment she'd had thoughts of self and child harm? (which, remember, is still distinctly not the same as psychosis).
The reason this narrative has so many people flipping out is because we've spent decades in an increasingly "girl power"/"support moms"/"believe all women" society, and its still not enough to conclude Lindsay Clancy DID HAVE the support she needed?
Women dominate maternal and perinatal mental health fields, making up roughly 90-95% (NINETY FIVE PERCENT!) of certified perinatal therapists and 88% of PMH-APRNs/NPs. Was the so-called lack of support really some kind of institutional sexism that forgets about women? And you think that living in socialist paradise Massachusetts, ranked the number one state in the country for maternal support, while working at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the elite medical research institutions in the world, married to a Microsoft Sales Executive husband Patrick Clancy, Lindsay Clancy still didn't have the support she needed?
I'm sorry to burst your feminist grievance-bubble lady, but you've been propagandized. If Lindsay Clancy didn't have the help she needed, NO WOMAN EVER WILL. And that's the point. It's never enough.
Considering your choice not to have kids, it's not mansplaining, it's parentsplaining. Please accept this opportunity to learn from someone with "lived experience" as a parent who changes diapers because my wife hates it, brushes teeth because my wife doesn't like doing it, sleeptrains and puts my kids to bed every night because no one else can handle them (and as a former child development psychology research assistant). It seems you need help to better understand the immense responsibility parents have to . . . not murder our children.
Take a moment to consider the possibility that no amount of your "institutional neglect", "isolated mother", or "pronatal unrealistic motherhood expectations" narrative is true for Lindsay Clancy; which is why people are getting set off.
Delighted you find such fulfillment in parenting. Not all do. If a parent resorts to murdering his or her offspring (and as you know, its usually men who kill their kids and commit "family annihilation"), then it's a tragedy for all. No doubt about that.
Sorry, evil is a religious concept that is unhelpful to me. Imperfect beings we will always be but the whole point of humanism, of feminism, is to strive to find ways to civilize us all.
Even having this conversation proves white liberal women are mentally ill beyond redemption.
Anyone who kills a child can rot in hell.
You covered this with more nuance than I've read elsewhere. Thank you.
There seems to be two basic groups. The "err on the side of mercy" group wants to believe that people are basically good but sometimes come under the influence of forces outside of their control that break them. The "cast the first stone" group wants to believe we maintain complete personal agency no matter what factors are involved. Both beliefs may just be comforting human illusions. Whichever belief we adopt seems to depend upon our own brand of self-righteousness, existential insecurity, and/or current echo chamber.
So many people are ready with their verdict. But I don't envy the actual jury. What a difficult decision to have to make.
And what a traumatic trial to endure!
Well done. Thank you.
I have been struggling how to balance my agreement that postpartum is a serious problem with my nagging belief that she should be held accountable for killing her children.
I really haven’t given much thought to this case. I did however watch a recent California Insider news episode covering the CA program for crime victims compensation. Program administrators are giving program benefits to convicted criminals based on the idea that only prior victimization could drive one to commit violent crime. In a biased search for a glass half-empty; activists mine a criminal’s history for incidents to support such a claim. We all witnessed the “Only prior victimization could drive such violence” alibi invoked to rationalize the Oct 7 attack against Israel.
I'm a lifelong feminist and left-leaning liberal; women and women's issues have always been central to my life. I, like most women, am appalled by Lindsay Clancy's killing of her children and weep for the loss of their young lives. In the discussions of postpartum psychosis (and I note most scholars weighing in here were men), there is seldom historical data presented. In fiction as in Morrison's Beloved, the harrowing story of an enslaved woman who killed her daughter so she would not fall into the hands of enslavers, we understand the mother's reasons, even as we recoil in horror at the act. I am not familiar with historical examples of mothers killing their children, although it must have happened. In recent cases of women committing this nightmare of a crime, we read conflicting diagnoses: usually mental disorders, separate from or caused by hormonal/ biological changes. However, the social aspects fascinate me bringing me more questions.
The intense pronatalism in our culture, the focus on the expected expert, continual self-denying caretaking by women (as usual, the responsibilities of father figures are ignored) seems to me to create a state of motherhood that is quite simply unattainable. Why are women alone supposed to live up the self-sacrificing ideal? Even if they seek help, they are made to seem aberrant for not just getting on with their twenty-four-hour caretaking. Furthermore, some women who have experienced postpartum depression, even psychosis, after the first pregnancy, are expected to snap out of it. Sometimes, unbelievably, they choose to become pregnant and repeat the process despite the dismal first go round. Have women become complicit in accepting this dubious and dangerous version of motherhood? Who is colluding in it? Who benefits from their misery? I'd like to see more women reject this idealized version of womanhood and rebel. I chose not to bear a child and never regretted that decision, but my heart goes out to women who, for whatever reasons, became pregnant and found themselves desolate and alone. Not all of these women commit murder, and I don't feel qualified to weigh in on this case. But isn't it time to reevaluate our expectations of all women who become mothers?
You chose not to have kids, so your own assessment that you "don't feel qualified to weigh in" is accurate.
For those of us who did decide to have children, we (both mothers AND fathers) make sacrifices and adjust our lives to care for those children. We find an untapped well-spring of strength to persevere in the face of challenging circumstances because of the weight of responsibility we have to protect those precious little children who need us.
I'm sorry, but this Lindsay Clancy case doesn't fit your self-professed feminist left-leaning liberal ideological narrative. Lindsay had more support and more access to support than 99.5% of women. She was a labor and delivery nurse. So not only was she eminently qualified professionally to fully understand her situation but she also had full access to peers and clinical support programs specifically built to help women in her situation.
Isolated and alone? Her inlaws were helping with childcare. Her husband had used his paternity leave to stay home and help with childcare. He shifted his job to work from home and help with childcare. They had the money to hire a nanny to help with childcare. They only discontinued the nanny's services when they decided [together] to discontinue the nanny's contract so Lindsay could stay home with the kids, a situation many women wish they could afford but can't.
You need numbers? This article itself provides them. Postpartum psychosis is experienced by 1-2 in a thousand women (0.2%), and of that 0.2% only about 4-5% commit fillicide. So 4-5% of 0.2% is one in ten thousand women. And of the 5 clinicians (FIVE, how's that for support?) providing her medical care, not a single one thought her symptoms merited diagnosis as postpartum psychosis or bipolar. The question is do we "trust the science"/"trust the experts" or not? The only finding of psychosis was provided by the psychologist hired by her lawyer. Seriously? And even that hinged on their assertion after the murders of a single command hallucination; one that she hasn't experienced before or since.
Come on. How credulous do people have to be? And she wasn't even reliably taking the medications they were prescribing. Did she think she knew better than her doctors? Especially as a nurse, she should have known better than anyone to trust her care team and follow the care plan. As a labor and delivery nurse, why didn't she immediately share with her providers the moment she'd had thoughts of self and child harm? (which, remember, is still distinctly not the same as psychosis).
The reason this narrative has so many people flipping out is because we've spent decades in an increasingly "girl power"/"support moms"/"believe all women" society, and its still not enough to conclude Lindsay Clancy DID HAVE the support she needed?
Women dominate maternal and perinatal mental health fields, making up roughly 90-95% (NINETY FIVE PERCENT!) of certified perinatal therapists and 88% of PMH-APRNs/NPs. Was the so-called lack of support really some kind of institutional sexism that forgets about women? And you think that living in socialist paradise Massachusetts, ranked the number one state in the country for maternal support, while working at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the elite medical research institutions in the world, married to a Microsoft Sales Executive husband Patrick Clancy, Lindsay Clancy still didn't have the support she needed?
I'm sorry to burst your feminist grievance-bubble lady, but you've been propagandized. If Lindsay Clancy didn't have the help she needed, NO WOMAN EVER WILL. And that's the point. It's never enough.
Oh, boy. Wonder why I set this antifeminist mansplainer off. I do know I don't envy any women in his life.
Considering your choice not to have kids, it's not mansplaining, it's parentsplaining. Please accept this opportunity to learn from someone with "lived experience" as a parent who changes diapers because my wife hates it, brushes teeth because my wife doesn't like doing it, sleeptrains and puts my kids to bed every night because no one else can handle them (and as a former child development psychology research assistant). It seems you need help to better understand the immense responsibility parents have to . . . not murder our children.
Take a moment to consider the possibility that no amount of your "institutional neglect", "isolated mother", or "pronatal unrealistic motherhood expectations" narrative is true for Lindsay Clancy; which is why people are getting set off.
Delighted you find such fulfillment in parenting. Not all do. If a parent resorts to murdering his or her offspring (and as you know, its usually men who kill their kids and commit "family annihilation"), then it's a tragedy for all. No doubt about that.
Thanks for the manspaining I never asked for.
Sorry, evil is a religious concept that is unhelpful to me. Imperfect beings we will always be but the whole point of humanism, of feminism, is to strive to find ways to civilize us all.