Parents Who Murder Their Children
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The incident which brought the issue of parents who murder their children to the fore in the American consciousness most recently was the case of Susan Smith, a young mother who told one story to the world for weeks and then was forced to tell the truth. She claimed that her car had been stolen by a black man at an intersection, and that he had driven off with her two children in the back seat. She later was charged with having driven her car--and her two young sons--into a lake, leaving the world wondering how so many people could have been fooled, how they could have been so ready to accept the story that a black person had committed such a crime, and most important of all, how a mother could kill her children. The world may have been surprised, but police were less so. Medical and police professionals know of many such cases each year, and when a child disappears, the parents are usually the first rather than the last people suspected of the crime. Society has always had a difficult time accepting this sort of crime, coping with it in the courts, and punishing parents who kill their children. Susan Smith is not the only mother to kill her children, nor is she the first to fool the public into supporting her search for her children before the truth comes to the fore. An examination of the issue shows how much effort is being put into trying to understand why this happens, how to prevent it, and how to address the guilty party when it does happen.
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action. Precisely what forces come together to produce this violent reaction is a matter of much speculation. One of the most common patterns involves a woman who is severely depressed and who may also be suicidal. Some doctors cite psychosis or postpartum depression as contributing factors. Another factor is called Munchausen's syndrome by proxy in which mothers secretly make their children sick to win attention. Psychiatrists identify this as a bizarre mental condition that impels people to feign or induce illness in order to get care and
nurturing from doctors and hospitals. These people injure their children in their place. They may inject the youngsters with poisons or drugs or mix blood in their urine, and parents have even been caught by surveillance cameras attempting to smother their offspring in their hospital beds.
Authorities are more unanimous in their expression of the social roots of parental killing. Susan Hiatt, the director of the Kempe National Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect in Denver, states that
generally parents who kill their children tend to be under a lot of stress. They may be very young and not ready for the demands of parenthood. In all likelihood they ar
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Approximate Word count = 3243
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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