2001/08/01 by Bronwyn Naylor
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health #Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse #Intimate Partner and Family Violence
paper · doi:10.1080/10350330120018292
openalex publication_date 2001/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Mothers who kill or injure their children highlight crucial disjunctions between the status ‘mother’ and the practices and expectations of mothering. Failures of ‘mothering’ reconstruct the meaning of the maternal, while being themselves given meaning by it. Violent mothers may be pathologised and excused, demonised and condemned, but the explanatory narratives that are used draw centrally on notions of the maternal and, more broadly, the feminine. These discourses are reproduced in legal proceedings and sentences, and in the media reports of these proceedings. This paper will analyse the construction of the bad mother in legal proceedings in one prominent recent Victorian case, and in the print media reports of this case.