Filicide (murder Of One’s Own Children): Its 5 Types And Motivations
Our children are probably the people most of us love the most. These are fragile creatures that we have seen born, who have needed and conquered us from the moment they came into the world and for whom we would give everything. Protecting offspring is something natural for most human beings and for many other animals, many parents often risking or sacrificing their own lives to protect them.
And not only on a biological level: our culture also places the family and its protection and care, and especially its offspring, as one of the most important institutions. That is why cases like that of Bretón, who murdered his two children, have shocked society. We are talking about one of the most high-profile cases of filicide in recent times. AND It is about this type of crime, filicide, that we are going to talk about throughout this article.
It is known as filicide the murder of one’s own offspring at the hands of one or both parents , regardless of the motive for said action or the methodology used for it. The context in which said murder or homicide occurs can be very variable, and can range from postpartum psychoses to the presence of domestic violence or the use of the minor as an object to harm the other member of the couple.
With respect to victims, although filicide does not refer to the age of the victim, as a general rule, children who are less than six months old are at greater risk of suffering lethal violence from their parents. With respect to sex, differences in this regard have generally not been detected in Western society.
It is a crime that the majority of society considers to say the least abject and unnatural and that is generally seen as something infrequent, but although it is not common, it unfortunately occurs in a greater proportion than it appears at first glance. In fact, filicide is one of the types of crime that generates the majority of unnatural deaths of children with the vast majority of violent deaths of minors caused by their parents (the percentage of violent deaths of children by people outside the family is around 25%).
We are before a very serious blood crime harshly punished by law not only in the face of the fact of killing a person voluntarily but also because of the aggravating factor that this is carried out by someone related to the victim, abusing the trust and connection of the victim with the murderer.
In addition to this, in many cases we are dealing with a murder in which there was a relationship of dependency and a big difference in the power relations between the two abusing the difference in physical strength or superiority in age, experience and dynamics of power and dependence for the sustenance and even survival of the victim towards their executioner.
Filicide or infanticide? Differences
The truth is that although the concept is easily understandable, the term filicide is not as well known among the general population, and the use of the term infanticide for this type of crime is much more common. However, the truth is that although filicide can be infanticide, these are not synonymous concepts but rather present clear differences between them.
Firstly, while infanticide tells us about the causing of the death of a boy or girl by an adult, talking about filicide implies that the author of said death is one of the person who maintains a filial relationship with the minor : one of the parents.
An aspect that we also have to take into account is that when we think of filicide we usually think that the murdered person is a boy or girl, but the truth is that the concept actually refers to the intentional provocation of the death of a son or daughter. daughter regardless of his/her age.
What are the motivations that filicides usually have?
It is difficult to imagine what could motivate a person to actively cause the death of one or more of his or her own children. However, some authors such as Resnick have attempted to make a general classification of the reasons that have been expressed in different cases. The research carried out reflected the following categories or types of filicide
1. Altruistic filicide
This type of filicide usually occurs when the child has some type of medical condition that makes or is considered to make him suffer throughout his life, or suffers from some type of terminal illness. It is about causing the death of the son or daughter as a method of avoiding suffering
Another subtype of filicide considered altruistic by whoever carries it out is the one that is directly linked to the suicide of the aggressor himself. The father or mother intends to commit suicide and considers that her children will not be able to live or that it would be unfair to abandon them, preferring to kill them before making them face the situation.
2. Generated by psychosis or mental illness
Although the assumption that people who carry out these types of acts are people with mental disorders is unrealistic, the truth is that in some cases filicides do occur in the context of mental illness. An example is during some type of psychotic break, in the context of hallucinations or delusions in which the child is confused with a possible enemy, persecutor, murderer, alien or demon. Another option is that it occurs in women with postpartum depression, with the first days being of special risk.
3. Unwanted child
This type of filicide is motivated by the fact that the child in question was unwanted by the parents or by one of them, or by not being able to take care of the minor. Technically, some authors consider abortion as such, although filicide is usually reserved for children already born. A less dubious and controversial and more direct example is the one that occurs due to neglect of the needs of the minor or abandonment of this
Filicide that was not intended to cause the death of the child in question, but that ends up leading to it, is considered as such. It is common in the context of domestic abuse or vicarious violence to bend the will of the couple in the case of gender violence. It can also occur in the context of a fight.
5. Vengeful or utilitarian filicide
The death of the minor is used as an instrument of torture and revenge, generally to harm the partner due to some type of damage or rejection. This is a type of vicarious violence directed not so much towards the minor himself (his death is the least important to the aggressor) but rather towards causing harm to another person
The filicide: common characteristics
The act of killing a child is not something, as we have said before, common. However, there are certain circumstances and characteristics that can facilitate the commission of this type of act.
Among them, it has been observed that many of the cases of filicide occur in people with reduced capacity for motherhood or fatherhood In some cases there has been a deprivation of affection in the parent’s own childhood, experiencing the parent-child relationship as something negative in which there has been no love and possibly some type of abuse.
Other possible risk factors are found in young mothers and fathers, whose first child appears before the age of 19, and with few economic and social resources. Finally, another different profile includes the presence of sadistic and psychopathic characteristics, lack of emotional connection with the minor and use of this as an instrument to manipulate, control or attack the other (this last profile also corresponds to that of the abuser).
