What is the phenomenon of parents killing their own children and then killing themselves? Why does it seem more prevalent in today’s society than at any other time throughout history? Have parents collectively lost their minds?
Recently, a mother, 34-year-old Florida woman Dawn Brown, killed her two children, ages 5 and 9, in their home and then committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan. How she killed her children or why she killed them has not been released.
Honestly, I don’t need the details. Do you? There is something fundamentally wrong with a parent who can just take their child’s life. It’s one thing to be at your wits end and want to kill yourself but why take the kids with you? Why not seek out help from a professional? Aren’t our children worth living for?
My speculation, she wanted to hurt the father. There is no other explanation that makes any sense at all to me. Really, there is no reason or scenario in which this heinous crime makes any sense.
I conceived and grew my children in my body for 10 months, like most mothers. Their life is the most precious thing I’ve ever had the honor of protecting. I would throw myself in harm’s way before I would ever let something bad happen to them.
I could never find the strength in my heart to kill them. My instinct is to save them at all costs. What has to happen in a mother’s mind, heart and soul to flip the switch to turn all that unconditional love into hatred?
It has to be hate. You can’t kill someone and say that you love them. If you love someone, you would spare their life. You would want them to go on to happiness.
We’ve all had bad mom days when our kids are driving us up the wall and we feel like things are just falling down around us. I get that. Being a mother can be overwhelming to the point that you feel like you are drowning in obligation and failing miserable at the one thing you want so desperately to succeed at, above all else.
When the girls were smaller, I remember having a 1 year old and a 3 year old and both crying, overtired, waking one another up from naps and being all alone and thinking I just wish it would all stop. I’m pretty sure that every mom I know has been there, but never once did I think, “Hey, maybe I should just kill them and then off myself!†Never.
It seems everyday in the news there is another mother or father who has taken their child’s life with little or no explanation, leaving behind family and friends in pain at the loss of the children.
Moms who don’t want to be mothers and put their newborns in the garbage, women who are overwhelmed, overtired and see no other solution than to end it all by getting rid of the kids, moms who don’t want to or can’t be a mother any longer and decide to kill themselves but don’t trust or want anyone else to raise their children.
I don’t know how you can reason it. The bottom line is that killing your child is the worst crime a mother can commit.
What do you think could drive a parent to the brink of sheer insanity that they feel their only course of action is to murder their babies?
Photo Source: Tim Samoff
