We memorialize and pillory: when moms murder
This is a tough topic. Recently in Winnipeg a mother killed her two young children and then herself. She was apparently suffering from postpartum depression. The community support for the “family” was positive–stacks of teddy bears left outside the [likely empty] home where the children died, tears and efforts to understand. About a year earlier, an aboriginal mom participated with a partner in the murder of her young daughter. She is in jail, with a guard outside her cell–no one (no one I have heard) speaks up with compassion. In one case the mother punished herself with death, and the community responds by feeling sorry and kind–nothing left to do but be generous (and perhaps glad it’s not “me”). In the other case, there’s a pound of flesh to extract. This mother did not kill herself or die, but was arrested and criminalized, a pariah in her own community and in the eyes of the general citizenry. I guess we like to think that nobody can be so bad unless they are a hybrid, huma