Hands that Rock the Cradle.... Hands that Kill

We as a nation are always shocked when a mother kills her child. But it is more common then we think. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics and the FBI Crime statistics, verified that over 600 times per year mothers kill their own children!

Currently Casey Anthony is facing the death penalty for the murder of her 2 year old daughter. The nation has all eyes glued to this case as it unfolds in the media.

on June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates, a mother of five who drowned all of her children in a bathtub hit the headlines of America.

Then there is pediatrician Ellen Feinberg, of Champagne, Illinois, who stabbed her two young sons, one fatally. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Also, we all remember Melissa Drexler, "The Prom Mom" who at her senior prom, gave birth to a 6 lb, 6 oz son, baby boy, strangled him to death, threw him in the garbage, and returned to the prom where she ate and according to news reports, requested the Metallica song "Unforgiven" to be played for her boyfriend. She plead guilty to aggravated manslaughter.

Susan Smith hit the headlines When she drowned her 2 children because the man she wanted to be with didn't want a woman with kids.

Diane Downs drove to an isolated area and shot her three children,and then drove them to the emergency room. One child died. Why did she do this? they interfered with her love life.

We want to believe that women love and protect their children but this is not always true. Many women abandon their children by just leaving them with a relative instead of taking responsibility for raising them. Drug abuse plays a big part in this phenomenon. Abandonment is very bad but murder is horrific.

Jill Korbin, child abuse expert states that " Homicide is one of the leading causes of death of children under age four."

Cheryl Meyer, an associate professor of psychology at Wright State University, and her co-authors, interviewed 40 women in prisons following their convictions for killing their children in the 1990s. She said "in approximately eight of those cases, mothers killed their children with the assistance of a male partner, either the child's father, stepfather or the mother's boyfriend."

In The book titled When She Was Bad, on page 7 Patricia Pearson points out that: "Women commit the majority of child homicides in the United States, and a greater share of physical child abuse."

There is something wrong with a society that produces women that feel killing their children is a suitable way to deal with what they feel is an inconvenience or interference in their life. These women obviously place little value on the life of their children. We need to find out why.

I believe the answers are pretty clear but each of us need to figure it out for ourselves. Only then can we make a change in the mind set of young mothers so they will no longer believe it is ok to kill their children.

Sources:
1. trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/
2. .foxnews.com/story/0,2933,91598,00.html