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A recent tragic event: Mother accused of killing three children in Massachusetts
The Culture War angle: Following this event some TikTok accounts have released videos in support of the mother and voicing concern over mothers and their mental health, leading to discussion. Examples: https://postimg.cc/NKpX61ty, https://postimg.cc/vxT8d6jK, https://postimg.cc/CnnyNC9w, https://postimg.cc/8FvttKzK, https://postimg.cc/TK6wKhWK, https://postimg.cc/K3cXXSKv
Considering the nature of the crime I find the wording in the TikTok's off putting. This isn't phrased as something the mother, Lindsay Clancy 'did'. It's something that 'happened to her' and that she 'needs support'.
On a tangential note: This reminds me of an older sex war question surrounding female violence towards children and how women are treated in society. Specifically the terminology of SIDS. Sudden Infrant Death Syndrome. Which became a notable issue when multiple women who murdered their own children ended up, after a few years, being released scot-free. Neven Sesardić, a Croatian philosopher, wrote a very interesting article published in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Specifically relating to Sally Clark, a woman in the UK who was accused of murdering two of her children, and some relevant statistical analysis that cast aspersions on the validity of SIDS as it was relied on by expert witnesses to defend Clark in court. Along with leveraging statistical critiques against the Royal Statistical Society.
The tangential relevance here is whether or not Lindsay Clancy will be afforded similar legal leniency on top of everything else. Though with the hellish nature of the crime, one could only really hope for punishments that far exceed all the comforts that a lifetime in a women's prison will afford her.
I don’t think this woman deserves sympathy, but motherhood today is very stressful. Before feminism, motherhood was considered an important job and girls were raised at a young age to master the skill. Hence, girls were given dolls young so they could model the way their mother raised them at a young age, and so they would learn to multitask activities (mothers would gently reprimand their daughters if the doll was misplaced while eg cooking). Girls would spend time with women and mothers to learn from them and the separate spheres of male/female interest ensured that women didn’t have men’s stressors. Female culture and its emphasis on “nurturing feelings” like making a scarf for a loved one or beautifying a home was simply a way to prepare the mind for the bond required to raise a healthy child. A girl by the age of 14 would probably have mastered all of the domestic tasks she would be using at 24 as a wife. And so the tasks involved with motherhood would be mastered, which means their stress would be minimized. Women by and large did not have stressful work in addition to duties of mother/wife, or if they did, they would have wet nurses and hired help. Once a woman had a child, family would usually come to minimize the stress at the home. Women would also be around their child much more, forming a bond, because exclusive breastfeeding was common for 1-2 years and then intermittently reduced over 4.
We have essentially raised generations of women who are untrained in being a mother. It shouldn’t be surprising that PPP and PPD are high and that women feel overwhelmed. Motherhood is more like a musical instrument than a college course, you simply cannot learn it by studying from a book for a year at 25 or something. When you see a girl raised by a traditional family and especially if she had many younger children (having to act as a mother to them) her entire nature is different, you can literally feel the the nurturing soul.
It has literally never been easier
Medicating your child, giving him formula and an iPad, and sending him off to the
BPD factorydaycare has never been easier. But that’s not motherhood. That’s the industrial baby factory that the industrialized women of America can sense is their destiny (but hysterically impugn on the traditional mode of life, often in the traditional costume of the handmaid’s tale). The actual act of motherhood and meeting the needs of babies has never been harder. The depletion of oxytocin from insufficient mother-baby bosom contact and the eradication of mother-born bonds in the high alertness circadian rhythm hours are what leads to PPD and PPP (and BPD in the baby) and are exactly why these women commit infanticide, like a baboon in the wild doing the same when facing predation and lack of food or facing “male immigrant” stressor knowing that the new authority will slay their children like Herod (and unable to flee to the older tradition encoded in the flight to Egypt)So the near-complete eradication of childhood mortality is outweighed because…bosom contact is slightly more inconvenient? The vast increases in housework efficiency by microwaves, refrigerators, vacuums, laundry machines and dishwashers thereby giving you more time for your children is outweighed by…circadian rhythms? The complete elimination of starvation as a realistic threat/stress is outweighed by…?
Any slightly objective assessment would find the scales tipped dramatically towards the past having far more dramatic stressors, hardships and timesinks than the present. I don’t see how you can realistically just handwave away six children in a row dying of scarlet fever as less stressful than the present
Childhood mortality and mortality in childbirth are stressful events, naturally, and every animal species deals with the death of children. That does not turn the entire enterprise into stress. A death during early years is stressful for the mother after it occurs, but this does not mean that all of motherhood and all of its tasks and labor spent are stressful. Women miscarried and their children died young, but this was normal during that period, and it’s not as if they didn’t social bonds to help them through the emotional pain.
… Are you kidding? The key difference is the 9-5 work week that most women are forced by conditions to deal with; the lack of training in motherhood; insufficient time spent with child and breastfeeding. That was the whole post. Mothers do not spend more time with their children in America today. Especially when you consider that “time” is not “experience salience”; the importance hours are during high alertness, not making them dinner after they’re exhausted from daycare/school.
Sure I can. How about three children in a row being infanticided by their mother? How about women not even trying to have children because they find it too stressful? How about the increase in childhood obesity and autism which are associated with stressed mothers, or BPD increases associated with poor mother-child bond?
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