It is a word that feels heavy on the tongue. When someone asks what a woman is called who kills her kids, they aren't usually looking for a simple dictionary definition. They are looking for a way to categorize something that feels fundamentally "wrong" in the biological sense. The specific legal and criminological term is filicide, though if the victim is an infant under a year old, it's often called infanticide. If the baby is less than 24 hours old, it's neonaticide.
The labels don't really make the reality any easier to swallow.
Society tends to view mothers as the ultimate protectors. When that dynamic flips, the shockwaves are massive. We see it in the news cycles and the true crime documentaries. We see names like Andrea Yates or Diane Downs and wonder how a brain gets to that point. It isn't just "evil." Honestly, it’s usually a messy, horrific intersection of untreated psychosis, extreme isolation, and sometimes, a complete break from reality.
The Language of Tragedy: Filicide and its Variants
Technically, a woman who kills her offspring is a filicidal mother. The act itself is filicide.
The word comes from the Latin filius (son) or filia (daughter) combined with the suffix -cide (to kill). It’s a clinical term. It’s used by forensic psychologists and police to strip away the emotion so they can actually study the patterns. Because there are patterns. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a leading forensic psychiatrist who basically pioneered the classification of these crimes in 1969, found that mothers who kill their children usually fall into specific categories. It's rarely just one thing.
Sometimes it's "altruistic" filicide. That sounds like a contradiction, right? How can killing be altruistic? In the mind of a mother suffering from severe clinical depression or psychosis, she might believe the world is too cruel for her children. She thinks she's "saving" them. It’s heartbreakingly twisted logic.
Then you have the cases driven by acute psychosis. This is the Andrea Yates territory. In 2001, Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub. She wasn't angry. She wasn't "evil" in the way we see in movies. She was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and believed she was saving their souls from Satan. The state of Texas eventually found her not guilty by reason of insanity, but the label of "child killer" remains the primary thing the public remembers.
Why Does This Happen? (It’s Rarely Simple)
We have to talk about the "Medea complex."
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In Greek mythology, Medea killed her children to get back at her husband, Jason, after he betrayed her. In modern criminology, this is "spousal revenge filicide." It’s rare. Statistically, it’s much less common than filicide driven by mental illness or "unwanted child" scenarios. But when it happens, it captures the public imagination because it feels so retaliatory and cold.
Most people don't realize how much the "health" category plays into this. Postpartum depression (PPD) is a spectrum. On one end, you have the "baby blues" which most moms get. On the far, terrifying end, you have postpartum psychosis. It affects about 1 or 2 out of every 1,000 births.
It’s a medical emergency.
When a woman is in the grip of psychosis, her executive function is gone. She’s hallucinating. She might hear voices. If you've ever been so sleep-deprived you started seeing things in the shadows, imagine that multiplied by a thousand, plus a hormonal crash that would floor a marathon runner. That is the reality for some of these women.
The Categorization of Maternal Filicide
Dr. Resnick’s five categories are still the gold standard for understanding what a woman is called who kills her kids in a psychological context:
- Altruistic: Killing out of "love" or to prevent perceived suffering.
- Acute Psychotic: No rational motive; the mother is experiencing a total break from reality.
- Unwanted Child: Usually involves neonaticide (killing within 24 hours of birth), often by young mothers who concealed their pregnancies.
- Accidental: This is often the result of "Battered Child Syndrome" or extreme neglect/abuse where the death wasn't the primary goal, but the outcome of violence.
- Spousal Revenge: Killing specifically to cause pain to the father.
Each of these carries a different weight in court. A mother who leaves a newborn in a dumpster because she's 16 and terrified is viewed differently by a jury than a mother who poisons her teenagers for insurance money. Both are filicides. But the "why" changes the label society puts on them.
The Role of Neonaticide and Social Isolation
Neonaticide is its own beast.
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It’s almost always committed by young, unmarried women who have no support system. They deny the pregnancy—not just to others, but often to themselves. When the baby arrives, the panic is so overwhelming that they "eliminate" the problem. It’s a primitive, fear-based response. Researchers like Michelle Oberman have pointed out that these women aren't usually "criminals" in the traditional sense. They don't have a history of violence. They are just profoundly alone and trapped by circumstance.
Contrast that with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (now known as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another). Think Dee Dee Blanchard. While she didn't technically "kill" Gypsy Rose in the traditional "one-time event" sense, she was killing her slowly through medical abuse. When a mother kills a child via medical child abuse, the term is still filicide, but the pathology is about the mother's need for attention and sympathy. It’s a slow-motion tragedy.
Legal Consequences and the Insanity Defense
The legal system hates these cases.
Juries are notoriously unpredictable when a woman kills her kids. There’s a "pedestal effect"—we want mothers to be perfect, so when they aren't, we either want to lock them up forever or we want to believe they must be "crazy" because a "sane" woman couldn't do it.
The "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity" (NGRI) plea is incredibly hard to win. You have to prove the mother didn't know right from wrong at the exact moment of the act. In many states, if she tried to hide the body or called 911 afterward, the prosecution uses that as "proof" she knew it was wrong. But the brain is more complex than that. You can know something is "illegal" but believe it is "spiritually necessary."
The Stigma of the "Bad Mother"
Honestly, the word "monster" gets used more than "filicidal parent."
We use these labels to distance ourselves. If we call her a monster, then she’s not like us. She’s not "human." But the reality is that many of these women were struggling with deep-seated issues that were ignored. In the U.S., we have a terrible track record of maternal mental health care. We drop moms off a cliff after they give birth. We check on the baby every week, but we barely check on the mom's brain.
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When we ask what a woman is called who kills her kids, we are often looking for a way to make sense of the senseless. We want a label that explains the "glitch" in the maternal instinct. Whether it's infanticide, filicide, or neonaticide, the terminology serves as a bridge between the horror of the act and our need for a structured, legal response.
Recognizing the Red Flags
Preventing these tragedies starts with taking maternal mental health seriously. It’s not just "stress."
If a mother is expressing thoughts of harming herself or her children, or if she seems detached from reality, it’s a crisis. You’ve got to act. Don't worry about being "polite" or overstepping.
What to look for:
- Command hallucinations: Hearing voices telling her to do things.
- Extreme sleep deprivation: This is often the trigger for a psychotic break.
- Hyper-religiosity: A sudden, intense obsession with demons, sin, or "saving souls" that feels out of character.
- Flat affect: If she seems "numb" or robotic rather than sad.
The most important takeaway is that filicide is a symptom of a much deeper breakdown. It is a failure of the individual, yes, but often a failure of the safety nets that should have caught her.
Next Steps for Awareness and Prevention:
- Normalize the Conversation: If you know a new mother, ask her specifically about her mental state, not just how the baby is sleeping. Use direct questions.
- Support Resources: Familiarize yourself with the Postpartum Support International (PSI) resources. They provide specialized help for mothers experiencing the intrusive thoughts that often precede filicidal ideation.
- Medical Intervention: If someone is showing signs of psychosis (hallucinations or delusions), they need an emergency room, not a therapy appointment next week.
- Advocate for Policy: Support legislation that funds maternal mental health screenings and provides longer postpartum care periods under insurance.
Understanding the labels—filicide, infanticide, neonaticide—is just the beginning. The real work is in ensuring fewer women ever fit the definition.