Why Do Some Parents Kill Their Own Children?

Filicide — when a parent murders their own child — is perhaps the most intimate crime around, as well as one of the hardest to understand. Most people find the thought of filicide so repulsive that they simply declare mothers and fathers who take take their own kids' lives "monsters". The uncomfortable truth is, however, that parents who end up killing their own children are people — feeling, thinking, complicated people, just like everyone else. Better understanding what motivates parents to murder their offspring is key to preventing such homicides.

Filicide: A Cold Look At The Facts

With an approximate 500 cases in the US annually, filicide is certainly a large concern. Despite the fact that murder cases in which children were robbed of their lives by the very person expected to nurture them make up only 2.5 percent of total homicide cases, it's important to note that parents and step parents are the most common perpetrators in murder cases involving young children.

A paper published in the journal Forensic Science International in the year 2014 took a close look at 15,691 filicide cases in the US, spanning 32 years, with the ultimate goal of preventing murders in which parents kill their own children.

The study found that:

• Children under the age of seven made up the majority of filicide cases (72 percent), with a third being less than 12 months old.
• Ten percent were aged between seven and 18.
• Sixteen percent of those killed by their parents were adult children.
• Fathers were accused of killing their children in 57.4 percent of all filicide cases.
• Mothers and fathers kill their infants (under a year old) in nearly equal numbers.
• Fathers are much more likely than mothers to murder adult children, being the accused in 78.3 percent of such filicide cases.

The most common filicide scenario is a father killing his son, the study found, with stepmothers murdering stepchildren of either gender being the least likely scenario. Stepchildren being murdered by stepparents only made up 11 percent of filicide victims, proving the old "evil stepmother" scenario fairy tales have familiarized us all with partly wrong.

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Younger children are more likely to die at the hands of a parent, quite literally, while older children who are killed by a parent, those would would be able to defend themselves attempts to strangle or beat them to death, are much more likely to succumb to firearm injuries.

Though interesting, these stats tell us little about the kind of parent who commits filicide, or what their motives might be. Both the lead author of this study, Dr Timothy Mariano, who was a third-year psychiatry resident in the Alpert Medical School of Brown University when the paper was published, and others have their theories.

Why The Root Causes Of Filicide Are More Complex Than You May Have Thought

Dr Timothy Mariano, who led a large study of filicide cases, believes that three primary causes lead parents to murder their own offspring:

• Serotonin-related mental illness, including depression and schizophrenia.
• Unusually high testosterone levels.
• "The unwanted child"; a child that was unplanned, which the parents cannot provide for, or who was ill.

Dr Phillip Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at Case Western, meanwhile, offers a broader analysis with five main causes of filicide. The "unwanted child" also appears in his list, with him offering a child born out of wedlock as a classic example. Mental illness, or as Resnick puts it, "acute psychosis", is another cause, he says.

Some filicide cases are motivated by spousal revenge, in which an (ex-)partner murders the children to hurt their co-parent. Finally, Resnick describes "fatal battering", in which a parent has set off to discipline their child but loses control to the extent that the child dies. These cases, unsurprisingly, mostly affect children of preschool age — those who are unable to defend themselves.

These parents can genuinely believe that they are doing the right thing. Is this as hard to understand when we conjure images of terminally ill children, or children born into severely economically disadvantaged situations? At the very least, I think that thoughts such as "I wish my child didn't have to suffer", or "I am sorry to have brought my child into this cruel world" are far from uncommon.

Can We Prevent Filicide Cases?

Child safety expert and best-selling author Gavin de Becker makes it clear that there's an almost fail-safe way to prevent being murdered by your own child: be a loving parent. What about preventing filicide cases, then?

Consistent suicide-prevention assessments are in place across much of the world, and Resnick and Friedman believe that similar strategies should be employed with the aim of preventing filicide — something that would first and foremost be made possible by mental health professionals entertaining the possibility that a parent could end up killing their own child in the first place.

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Therapists need to take parents' thoughts about harming their children seriously, their review suggests, and suicidal parents should be questioned about what they think would happen to their kids if they did take their own lives. At-risk parents could be committed involuntarily, while all postpartum parents could routinely be screened for filicide risk, as they are screened for postpartum depression signs in some countries.

In conclusion, though murdering one's own child certainly appears to be one of the more "monstrous" acts human beings commit, empathy and understanding could ultimately be the primary way to prevent these heartbreaking homicides.