WOMEN WHO KILL THEIR CHILDREN: CASE STUDY AND CONCLUSION CONCERNING THE DIFFERENCES IN THE FALL FROM MATERNAL GRACE BY KHOUA HER AND ANDREA YATES
Author(s):
Huckerby, Jayne
Format:
Journal article
Citation:
Duke Journal Of Gender Law & Policy, Volume 10, (2003). pp. 149-172.
Language:
English
Abstract:
This article explores the roles of race and culture, class, marital status, and biology in the media's treatment of two infanticidal women, Khoua Her and Andrea Yates. Her is a 24 year old Hmong immigrant who strangled her six children and attempted suicide before calling 911 to report the incident. She was ultimately sentenced to fifty years of imprisonment under the terms of a plea bargain that required her to plea guilty to six accounts of intentional second-degree murder for the killing of her children. Similarly, Yates is a 36 year old white, middle class, fundamentalist Christian homemaker in a traditional marriage who drowned her children in the bath tub before calling 911 and her husband to report the actions. Yates pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to two accounts of capital murder for the death of her children. To support the insanity plea, Yates' lawyers claimed that she was suffering from postpartum depression; ultimately, she was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death penalty. Apart from the formal legal process, both women have been subject to a precursory trial by media. A comparative study of the media treatment of Her and Yates makes it clear that the general tendency to afford more lenient treatment to women who fit the middle-class ideal of motherhood, manifests itself in relation to infanticidal mothers, and results in a tendency to label white, married mothers mad and poor women of color bad. This tendency is apparent even when these two groups of women describe essentially the same frustration and difficulties with the experience of motherhood (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)