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I realize this isn’t a top quality post, so I accept the judgement of the mods, but a mistrial has been declared in the case of Lindsay Clancy. Shes the woman in Massachusetts who admitted to killing her kids, but claims she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
The jury deliberated for seven days. Apparently, it came down to one male juror holding out against the other (nine female, two male) jurors. The belief is that he wanted to vote guilty. The jury reported to the judge that the holdout refused to follow the law regarding reasonable doubt, and the defense tried to have him removed. The judge refused. This morning, the judge declared a mistrial but gave defense one hour to get a stay from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Predictably, the online discourse is off the walls. X lifts the holdout up as a hero, while Reddit believes he (we know it’s a male because the defense said so) is an MRA/red piller and needs to have his phone searched.
Personally, I think she’s guilty of premeditated, cold blooded murder. That said, I get the postpartum argument, but am horrified by the defense of her and holding her up as some kind of hero.
Here is another example of what happens with troubled postpartum mothers.
Context: this woman was posting on a facebook group for mothers of babies born on a certain month, meant to connect over pregnancy and early childhood issues day-after-day
Her partner was murdered by their roommate while attempting to evict him, shortly after birth.
From their living situation, it doesn't seem that they had much family help.
From these horrible circumstances, she felt unwell, and she did what she thought she was supposed to do in these circumstances, and went to a hospital.
Upon learning of the mental condition of that woman, the healthcare workers decided that she was to be kept in a room for 24h under the watch of a minder. To prevent any harm to herself and to the hospital's insurance policy.
Meanwhile, the struggling infant was taken care of by other healthcare workers, fed formula instead of breastmilk, as best as they could do probably.
In my opinion, that whole hospital experience did not really help her mental state or actual circumstances. It probably deterred her from seeking further help through that venue.
I don't know if there is any reasonable way for government workers to help parents in such circumstances. The problem is that our entire society is structured around 'trusting' only credentialed people with certain basic care tasks, and having enormous liability like the sword of Damocles hanging over their head.
It helps if the parent in question has reliable connections. A father who can take a day off work, or grandparents who can take care of the baby while she recovers.
This is the kind of problem that disproportionately affects marginalized people who are barely scraping by as is. People who simply don't have the resources to withstand catastrophe.
The reasonable thing to do would be to hand off the kid to some other responsible guardian, but when no such is available then all you have left are overworked nurses.
That's a simplistic answer. This is a difficult problem.
Many people surviving in the lower-classes are barely hanging on. They have their little property or rented housing, and they are some bad events away from some catastrophe.
These people have very little bandwidth for helping other family members, and yet they still do.
Responsible guardians themselves probably want to stay away from the riff-raff.
Temporarily adopting a child as a foster parent is exceedingly difficult, aside from the bad behavior they bring into your household, simply because the parents are still in the picture.
The parents don't give up their parental rights, which means that they will swing by between a stint in jail, rehab or a bender to demand their child come with them, in some cases for the purpose of some kind of government benefits.
Solutions from progressives include throwing money or government workers at them.
Seeing as how this site leans conservative, I wonder if anyone here has a better solution? Personally, I lean pretty left on this one. You don't have connections that don't exist. I lean more towards government workers as what you need to solve this problem is people rather than cash. If current social workers are ineffective, then they either need better training, more manpower, or more competent people who would be attracted by improved working conditions and wages.
Not on short timescales. This is the sort of thing you need thick community bonds to make work. If one were interested in conserving society, I'd first look at getting people out of rentals and into real homes so they put down roots. That means stabilizing house prices, ensuring proper order, addressing illegal immigration so the demand side brings houses back into affordability, etc.
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