Why Do Religious Conservatives Kill Their Kids?

On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children, who ranged in age from six months to seven years, in a bathtub in her home. Prior to this, she had manifested symptoms of depression with psychosis, which were exacerbated in her postpartum periods. She had been hospitalized four times and was catatonic and mute during one admission. In statements made following the crime, she indicated that she believed that she was a bad mother and that she had concerns that her children would not grow up properly secondary to her shortcomings. She noted that she killed them to save them from eternal damnation.
— Psychiatry MMC

Here's a topic for study by some enterprising PhD student: Do more religious conservatives than liberals murder their children?

(You can spare me the comments about abortion. I'm talking about filicide here — and even more, our stupid tendency to explain differences in complex behaviors based on a generalized political affiliation.)

I was thinking about this even before George Will's latest column about how conservatives are more generous than liberals, which I'll take up in a separate post.

In Wisconsin this week, the home schooled daughter of a fundamentalist family died because her diabetes was left untreated. The mother says they are not crazy, religious people who belong to any organized faith. She just writes for an end-of-days ministry website on the side and actively proselytizes other women. Her sister-in-law, who called the sheriff, seemed to think there was a problem.

The aunt: "My sister-in-law, she’s very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors ... and she called my mother-in-law today ... and she explained to us that she believes her daughter’s in a coma now and she’s relying on faith. ..."

The dispatcher got more information from the caller and asked if an ambulance should be sent.

The aunt: "Please. I mean, she’s refusing. She’s gonna fight it so ... We’ve been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week, a few days now so."

In Iowa, an embezzling banker bludgeoned his wife and four kids to death before killing himself. In communications left behind, he indicated he believed his family was in heaven.

And, not to leave anyone out, a Muslim cab driver in Canada strangled his 16-year-old daughter because she refused to submit to his control and demands she wear traditional Muslim garb.

I've looked for a study that examines the role of political and religious beliefs of parents who murder their children. Haven't found one. But golly, the circumstantial evidence doesn't look good, does it? And it stands to reason, when you decide to kill your kids with a baseball bat, the idea you're sending them to heaven might lets you swing just a little more freely.

Anyone offended yet? No, I'm not calling all religious fundamentalists child murderers. But if there's a pattern of behavior that could lead to prevention, wouldn't it be good to understand it?

Psychiatric researchers may not see much merit in testing my only half-serious hypothesis. The research already indicates that filicide is a multidimensional crime, and like most human behavior, is not likely to reduce down to red state/blue state simplification.

But it's hard to shake that whenever I see news of a suicide bomber or a murderous parent, God shows up pretty frequently in the story. John Kerry bumper stickers, not so much.

Comments

[MItch Berg]

Aw, Charlie. I expect better than...this from you.

I'm at a loss for a response.

[Charlie Quimby]

It's probably good you didn't respond, since I'm not all that serious.

But after being involved in a stupid argument over the details of John McCain's dentition, I just thought I'd see if I could write a truly offensive headline and a divisive post drawing a hard line between conservatives and liberals, based on one or two isolated "facts."

I didn't do an all-out parody, because at heart, I didn't want to be that offensive or mistaken as being that nuts. But even in this form it's still kind of ugly, isn't it?

Wait to read my next post on the George Will "Conservatives are more generous than liberals" column before you decide about this one.

[Joel Rosenberg]

I'm going to disagree with both you and Mitch. While filicide is -- in American culture -- a rarity, I don't see any problem with exploring when and why it happens, in the US and outside.

I'd be careful, were I looking into it closely, to look at the problem of spurious correlation -- while I don't think that religious fundamentalism is a sign of insanity, it's demonstrable that some forms of insanity frequently tend to manifest themselves as religious fundamentalism.

(Not necessarily dangerous stuff, mind you; when my great-grandfather went nutso, he lost his job as kashruth inspector at a Coca Cola plant when he decided, in the middle of summer, that the air outside the plant wasn't sufficiently kosher, and that the windows had to be closed.)

In other cultures, it's common. The use of children as body armor is tragically common in the Arab/Muslim world (armor against Westerners, that is; it doesn't seem to be employed against, say, the Syrian military -- for why, see Hama). And it seems to be associated with certain flavors of Muslim fundamentalism combined with specific cultures.

I think there's a causal connection, myself; I think that certain flavors of religious fundamentalism lend themselves to such things that, from my admittedly ethnocentric point of view, are just plain horrible.