Moms killing kids not nearly as rare as we think

Experts say more mothers than fathers kill their children under 5 years of age
By JOCELYN NOVECK
AP National Writer

The Associated Press
updated 4/17/2011 3:32:26 PM ET 2011-04-17T19:32:26
NEW YORK — "How could she?"

It's the headline du jour whenever a horrific case emerges of a mother killing her kids, as Lashanda Armstrong did when she piled her children into her minivan and drove straight into the frigid Hudson River.

Our shock at such stories is, of course, understandable: They seem to go against everything we intuitively feel about the mother-child bond.

But mothers kill their children in this country much more often than most people would realize by simply reading the headlines; by conservative estimates it happens every few days, at least 100 times a year. Experts say more mothers than fathers kill their children under 5 years of age. And some say our reluctance as a society to believe mothers would be capable of killing their offspring is hindering our ability to recognize warning signs, intervene and prevent more tragedies.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42634832/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

I must say I agree on both points. We here at WS may see more of these cases then the general public does, but even we underestimate the true numbers of kids killed by their mothers.
And I do have to agree that it is very hard for us to believe that any mother can do something so horrible, let alone a mother that we know, and therefore, we prefer to think that a parent is just having a bad day...with little consideration to how many bad days she's already had. If the stigma of being a bad mother for asking for help were removed, I think we could stop a lot of these cases.

Hmmmm. . . usually agree with you on everything, NMK, but I have gotten the impression that most of the moms I see on here who killed their kids did it out of cruelty, revenge, or massive selfishness -- not people who would reach out for help. There are some who have killed their children by neglecting them; maybe they could have reached out. I don't really see that moms reaching out for help with parenting skills are stigmatized by anyone.

I have no problem at all believing that a mother would kill her children. I could list so many just from memory.