Child Homicide: Parents Who Kill »

From governments that enact population-limiting legislation or commit wholesale neonaticide, to families who purposely allow a weak, infirm, or unfavorably gendered infant to perish rather than expend limited resources, neonaticide, infanticide, and filicide, are practiced on every continent and by every level of cultural complexity.

Taking an objective and diagnostic approach, Child Homicide: Parents Who Kill examines the crime of neonaticide from all angles including historical, cultural, psychological, and legal. Expanding on the first edition, published as Endangered Children: Neonaticide, Infanticide, and Filicide, this edition details child homicide in its many forms such as shaken baby syndrome and Munchausen-by-Proxy as well as the differing circumstances involved in infanticide and filicide. Unlike many books on the subject, it investigates the behavior of the father—deemed responsible in roughly 75 percent of these cases—whether aggressive, complicit, or merely absent, and his ultimate culpability under the law.

The authors study the influence of today's media, and how its lightning-fast dissemination of these shocking and often complicated stories affect public opinion, copycat crime, and legal bias. This book explains legal defenses including insanity, differential post partum diagnosis such as post-partum psychosis, and discusses new policies, more appropriate, therapeutic punishments, and preventive measures.

Child Homicide: Parents Who Kill places this phenomenon in its historical, cultural, and human context and makes us realize that this is not just someone else's nightmare.

Children: An Endangered Species Throughout History Gender and Child Homicide The Literary Legacy Child Homicide in Literature and Opera

Neonaticide in Theory and in History:
Who Are the Perpetrators?
Sociobiological Perspectives Cross-Cultural Perspectives An Historical Perspective

Motives for Murder Why Murder?
Neonaticide Infanticide and Filicide

Neonaticide and Its Alternatives Options in Pregnancy Why Neonaticide?

Neonaticide and the Law Legal Ramifications Variations in Charges and Sentencing Should Neonaticide Be Punished? If So, How?
Anglo-American Laws and Sentencing What about the Fathers?

In Transition: From One Form of Child Homicide to Another Neonaticide Syndrome Shaken Baby Syndrome/Shaking Impact Syndrome Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP)

Postpartum Depression Disorders Differentiating the Disorders Case Examples What Can Be Done Early Diagnosis Legal Controversies

Infanticide and Filicide by Parents and Their Surrogates Motives What Kind of Parent…?
Other Motives Paternal Homicide Child Abuse Legal Ramifications The Survivors If These Are the Causes …

Neonaticide, Infanticide, Filicide, and the Law The Insanity Defense Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Psychosis Alternative Defenses In Defense of the Defendant Variations in Penalties An Interesting Question Are the Laws Anti-female?
Looking Back and Ahead

Choice and Reproduction: Political and Other Arguments The Abortion Controversy In the Courts Euthanasia and Infanticide Eugenics, Mercy-Killing, and Euthanasia The Parental Positions

Child Homicide: Preventive Measures Prevention of Neonaticide Pregnancy Prevention Preventing Infanticide and Filicide

Concluding Thoughts and Recommendations Provide Information Therapeutic Rehabilitation The Role of Therapeutic Jurisprudence

References

Appendix A

Appendix B

Index