As humans we adapt to our environments and develop coping mechanisms or habits which help us overcome or deal with our situations and circumstances.  Some of the mechanisms or adaptations we develop can do more harm to us than good in the long run.

When you have compassion helping and sacrificing for others becomes a natural human response.  However, should compassion toward others mean we sacrifice and neglect our own well-being?

Many do…and unfortunately pay the ultimate price for it!

Both men and women tend to take on more than they should or feel they need to in certain situations, but women tend to do this often.

Women – An Endangered Species?

Traditionally, women are tasks with being the primary caregiver to babies and home care takers while also balancing family, relationships and work; despite the task, women proudly accept and do it all.  

The thought of not being a “Super Mom” frustrates some women.  They feel obligated to maintain  the “Super Mom” image and guilty when they don’t.

This “Super Mom” image has put a tremendous amount of stress on women with fatal consequences not only to themselves, but also those in their care.

A Daunting Trend

According to the Center of Disease and Control (CDC), depression and other mental illnesses are among the leading factors for women and young girls to commit suicide…and worse, kill their children.  As noted by Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman and Dr. Phillip J Resnick in their joint article:

“Maternal filicide is defined as child murder by the mother. Infanticide is child murder in the first year of life. The term neonaticide was coined by Resnick to describe murder of an infant within the first 24 hours of life. Almost all neonaticides are committed by mothers. Neonaticidal mothers are often young, unmarried women with unwanted pregnancies who receive no prenatal care.  

Resnick’s review of the world psychiatric literature on maternal filicide found filicidal mothers to have frequent depression, psychosis, prior mental health treatment, and suicidal thoughts.

Maternal filicide perpetrators have five major motives:

a) in an altruistic filicide, a mother kills her child out of love; she believes death to be in the child’s best interest (for example, a suicidal mother may not wish to leave her motherless child to face an intolerable world; or a psychotic mother may believe that she is saving her child from a fate worse than death);

b) in an acutely psychotic filicide, a psychotic or delirious mother kills her child without any comprehensible motive (for example, a mother may follow command hallucinations to kill);

c) when fatal maltreatment filicide occurs, death is usually not the anticipated outcome; it results from cumulative child abuse, neglect, or Munchausen syndrome by proxy;

d) in an unwanted child filicide, a mother thinks of her child as a hindrance;

e) the most rare, spouse revenge filicide occurs when a mother kills her child specifically to emotionally harm that child’s father.”

(World Psychiatry, 2007 Oct; 6(3): 137–141. – Child murder by mothers: patterns and prevention.)

Women are the backbone of every society – acknowledged or not – and need to be protected and preserved similar to endangered species.

Practicing humaneness will ensure that we preserve and protect those who create humanity.  Let us all do our part.