Lindsay Clancy, the parent from Massachusetts awaiting trial on charges of killing her three children, has become one of the biggest news stories of 2026. It’s a real tragedy and one that’s hard to look at. It has polarised the internet to the extent that men have left comments on unrelated posts of mine on social media, asking me to defend the position they assume I must have:
“Would you be condemning a man who killed his children? Why do you make excuses for a woman?”
“There are women campaigning to protect Clancy as a victim of postnatal psychosis. How do you feel about that, when she’s a child killer?”
I had made no comment about Clancy at the time, but as a feminist with a profile, I was expected to answer these questions. I can understand it. I’d also like every man with a platform to comment every time a man kills his family, but I rarely see them do that and I don’t think it occurs to most men that they should. Perhaps because the vast majority of killing in the world is done by men, it feels less gendered when another news story comes out about a homicide. It’s the default that a killer is a man, so what does it have to do with another man? Feels arbitrary. When a woman kills, it’s a gendered issue.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, about 90% of homicides worldwide are committed by men. When women kill, they mostly kill former or current intimate partners, overwhelmingly in self-defence or after prolonged abuse. In short, if men stopped killing, killing would stop.
There is only one exception to this. While men are more likely than women to kill their children, women are just as likely as men to kill their baby or infant. This was not what I expected to see in the stats, and it shocked me.
Lindsay Clancy in court in Massachusetts earlier this month on charges of killing her three children.
Women are most likely to take the life of their baby while postpartum. If a mother kills her baby in the first 24 hours it is usually driven by extreme panic
The US National Library of Medicine tells us “filicide follows similar patterns throughout the western world”. Men are far more likely to be responsible for family annihilation – that is, to kill all their children and their current or former partner. Frequently in these cases they take their own lives too. The Centre of Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University presented a paper about this in 2013 and found four different motivations for men who committed family annihilation.
The self-righteous killer blames the mother of his children for the breakdown of the family.
The disappointed killer believes his family has let him down or has undermined or disrupted his idealised vision of family life. For example, the children are not following his traditional or religious values.
The anomic killer sees his family as an advertisement of his economic success. If he perceives himself to be an economic failure, his view of the family changes.
The paranoid killer fears an external threat from (for example) social services or the legal system, believing they will side against him and remove his children.
Professor David Wilson, one of the paper's three authors, and founder of the Centre of Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, said: "The family annihilator should be seen as a specific category of murderer, for a crime which appears to be increasing … To begin solving this problem the role of gender must be recognised, acknowledging that it is mainly men who will resort to this type of violence."
In all cases, the killers seem to suffer from the perception that their masculinity is undermined. The murders appear to represent a final desperate attempt at taking on a “masculine role”.
Women, on the other hand, are most likely to take the life of their baby while they are postpartum. If a mother kills her baby in the first 24 hours it is usually driven by extreme panic and concealment of an unwanted pregnancy. Often she is extremely young and in critical social isolation. The mothers in these instances often did not seek prenatal care. Often she is the only one who knows about the baby.
When women take the life of their baby some time between the first week and the first year, severe postpartum psychiatric disorders, either depression or psychosis, play a major role. The mother is often suffering from extreme maternal mental illness, delusions, or hallucinations in which her reality is heavily distorted.
This is why women have come out in numbers to campaign for Lindsay Clancy.
Her former mother-in-law, Susan Clancy, testified under oath that Lindsay was "begging for help" before killing her three children, who were aged five, three and eight months. This was verified by other witnesses who testified that Clancy's mental health had deteriorated after the birth of her youngest son.
The defence attorney asked if Lindsay Clancy had been "interested at all times in trying to get better and see doctors", and Susan Clancy replied: "Very much so."
"She was begging for help," she said, and described her as “a very nurturing, very loving" mother.
Many women have begged for help in postpartum trauma and have been failed by the system. Some women find it difficult to even ask for help because they know they are “supposed to be” nurturing and maternal without question. They feel they will be seen as monstrous for even admitting to feelings of alienation from their offspring. Often the media narrative plays into these ideas.
Michael Haight killed eight members of a single family (three adults and five children) in Utah in 2023. He was described in his obituary as a "doting father" who "cherished" each of his children and "lived a life of service”. There is a trend, when men commit familicide, for headlines to passively state "family found dead" or describe the killer as (for example) a "beloved local football coach.” The murderer's name is often withheld for several paragraphs. If the killer is a woman, she is usually named immediately. Her crime leads the story, rather than her role in her family or community. According to the US National Library of Medicine, “stories of maternal filicide or infanticide are reported in sensational terms using lay accounts to provide context and explanations further entrenching common misconceptions. Reviews of media representations of women who kill have shown that women are systematically categorised into mad or bad and that this categorisation shapes the legal responses of the justice system.”
None of this encourages women to speak up and get help; and we must remember that Clancy did ask, and was not heard. What can be done?
A systematic review of 45 studies in The Lancet Public Health in 2022 found that longer, paid parental leave is, unsurprisingly, associated with fewer depressive symptoms and less psychological distress among new mothers. The Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health also reports that about one in five American mothers experience postpartum depressive symptoms and that mothers who return to work before 12 weeks postpartum face a higher risk. It is important to remember that the US is the only developed nation with no guarantee of paid parental leave.
There is a trend, when men commit familicide, for headlines to describe the killer as (for example) a ‘beloved local football coach’
Removing the stigma around teen pregnancy and abortion and having significant societal safety nets, along with better education around postpartum depression and excellent state-funded or mandated parental leave, is a clear pathway to significantly reducing women killing their infants.
Unpicking the expectations of masculinity, ingrained deeply in a society that has led men away from therapeutic conversation and into a landscape where violence is shrugged off as a norm, is a much larger and more complex job. I do have sympathy for men who are fearful and fragile because of generations of violence and repression that has preceded them. But I also think it’s the job of men to start meaningful conversations and create proper architecture to make real change. Governments need to do more. Men in our communities need to do more.
I’d like to reverse the question asked of me on social media recently: “There are women campaigning to protect Clancy as a victim of postnatal psychosis. How do you feel about the fact that men are not campaigning to change societal expectations of men and get them help when they need it? Can you come to the aid of the men in your community? Can you help them understand that stigmas kill, and that mental health and anger management must be your collective priorities?”
If this were done, we might one day live in a world where it is just as shocking to hear that a man has killed his family as it is when we hear that a woman has done so.
Deborah Frances-White hosts The Guilty Feminist podcast. Her latest book, Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have, is published in paperback by Virago. Buy at a discounted price in the Nerve’s bookshop here