A Meta-Synthesis of Filicide Classification Systems: Psychosocial and Psychodynamic Issues in Women Who Kill Their Children

Abstract

Filicide is the killing of a child by a parent. To protect potential homicide victims, it is necessary to examine and identify intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics that result in filicide. The current filicide classification systems have intended to yield better etiological understanding of the crime and ultimately lead to prevention strategies and accurate death certification. A framework of motives and precipitating factors that lead to filicide by mothers offers a starting point to examine this emotionally evocative and complex phenomenon.

Infanticide and Neonaticide: A Review of 40 Years of Research Literature on Incidence and Causes

“…There are problems with the current typologies, stemming from the subjectivity of the terms. As Mugavin (2005) points out, most typologies include a discussion of ''violent'' and ''non-violent'' methods to murder the infant. For example, he cites Resnick who compared infanticidal methods used by men to those used by women.…”

Multivariate meta‐analysis: a robust approach based on the theory of U‐statistic

“…A joint synthesis of the amounts of blood loss and blood transfusions would, however, be more meaningful as the two outcomes are clearly correlated (higher amount of blood loss needing higher number of blood transfusions).Despite these advantages, use of multivariate meta-analysis approaches are limited by the lack of reporting of the within-study correlation in the original publications, inadequate awareness of the availability of methods among practitioners, and increasing but still limited availability of statistical softwares, to name a few [7]. Application of multivariate meta-analysis methods could benefit a broad spectrum of research fields including ecology [8][9][10], psychiatry [11][12][13], nutrition [14][15][16], health prevention [17][18][19], ethics [20][21][22], and gender difference in labor market [23][24][25][26] beyond many other fields listed in [7], as research questions involving multiple correlated outcomes are common.Following the notations for univariate meta-analysis, the formulation for multivariate meta-analysis, on the basis of multivariate random-effects model, is written asD 1; 2; : : : ; n; Y i D .Y i1 ; Y i2 ; : : : ; Y iM / > IˇD .ˇ1;ˇ2; : : : ;ˇM / > ; b i D .b i1 ; b i2 ; : : : ; b iM / > I " i D ." i1 ; " i2 ; : : : ; " iM / > ;where for the ith study,ˇdescribes the vector of population effect size, b i the vector of between-study random effect, and " i the vector of within-study sampling error.…”

Content analysis of infanticide and neonaticide cases in the UK

“…Previous classification attempts (Mugavin, 2008; Resnick, 1970; Sidebotham, 2013) have been found to be of limited use with regards to understanding filicide (Bourget & Gagné, 2005; Debowska et al., 2015; McKee & Egan, 2013; Mugavin, 2005; Porter & Gavin, 2010; Putkonen et al., 2011, 2016; Scott, 1973), let alone more refined categories of infanticide and neonaticide. However, the themes identified in this study show promising results for developing theoretical knowledge of the crimes and practical application, particularly as 65% of the cases were categorised.…”

“…Suggestions have been made to improve the classifications such as: the development of a psychological dimension (Mugavin, 2005) and increased focus on alternative variables such as social situation, mental health, substance abuse, methods of killing, victim characteristics, and provision of public services provided (Putkonen et al., 2016; Sidebotham, 2013). Such suggestions are beneficial to developing research, but due to a continuous failure of such systems an alternative application of such variables may be a better approach.…”