Psychiatrist Phillip Resnick on Why Parents Kill Their Own Kids

But what kind of parent would possibly murder her own children for mouthing off? TIME spoke with Dr. Phillip Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at Case Western and a leading expert on parents who kill their children. He testified for the defense in the case of Andrea Yates, who was convicted in 2002 of drowning her five children in the bathtub. The murder conviction was later overturned and she was found to be not guilty by reason of insanity — as Resnick had argued.

It’s aytpical. Younger children are much more likely to be killed than teenagers. If a child is killed for being “mouthy,” the remark that came out here, that’s more likely to lead to fatal battering. [Usually, in such cases,] a 3-to-5-year-old is thrown against a wall in an overzealous attempt at discipline and dies — as opposed to [a parent] planning to kill and shooting them with a gun.

You have identified five main circumstances in which parents kill their children.

The first is “altruistic.” The classic case is the mother who plans to take her own life and believes that the children are better off in heaven with her. Number Two is the case in which the parent is acutely psychotic. The third type is fatal battering [as described above]. the fourth is [to get rid of] an unwanted baby, for example an infant born out of wedlock. The final category is spousal revenge, [in which a parent kills the children to hurt the partner], typically after infidelity.

What we know so far about the Florida woman doesn’t fit easily into any of these categories. If the children were much younger, it could be maltreatment, but at this age, that does not fit how it usually works. My guess is that eventually we will have a much better picture. It might be very severe depression. It might be [that she thought they were] possessed by a demon. A lot more will come out than just this idea that you kill a kid because he’s mouthy.

I’ve read that mothers who kill their older children are likely to be married and employed, which was the case here and seems kind of strange to me.

Mothers with preschool children are less likely to be employed [than those with teenagers, so it could just reflect the population]. A single mother is more likely to be overwhelmed because there’s no one to help, but that’s with younger children. The newspaper said [that classmates and teachers described the children as] polite and good students. It is not an example of delinquent kids who are out of control and the mother doesn’t know what to do with them.

I’ve also read that murders of older children are more likely to be extremely violent.

Actually, the degree of violence depends very much on the child. A 3-year-old you can easily strangle or overdose. Teens are not going to cooperate in being killed so the use of a knife or gun is more necessary. In some cases of fathers who kill teenagers there has been a real standoff and hostility, but for mothers that’s not the usual pattern. I would not say the method of death expresses rage — it’s just what’s needed to take the life of older children.

Any speculation about what might have happened here?

As I understand it, there was a note left that said she planned to kill herself after killing the children, so the question becomes: was the primary issue that she was going to take her own life and then decided to take the children’s lives, or did she decide to take the children’s lives first and couldn’t go on after that?

Fathers are more likely to wipe out the whole family. In 95% of those cases, the fathers are the killer. The father may feel, I can’t support my family, I’m responsible for them, I’ll take all of them out with me. Whereas [murders by a] mother with this age children are “altruistic — they murder out of love, not out of hate — and they genuine believe that they are doing the children a favor. [But if that was the case here,] you would not expect the remark that they were “mouthy.” If she did do it for that reason, you’d expect her to put a better face on it.

In one case I had, a woman killed a 3-year-old and herself. The note said, ‘Bury us in one box, we belong together.’ In that type, it’s kind of an extended self [the mother sees the child as part of her]. It’s not necessarily negative; the mother may well think of young children as extensions of herself and feel that her children would be lost without her. [She thinks that] even if the husband remarried, they’d have a mean stepmother and so the children would be better off with her in heaven.