Filicide (murder of one's own children): its 5 types and motivations

Our children are probably the people most of us love the most. They are fragile creatures that we have seen born, who have needed and conquered us from the moment they came into the world and for whom we would give everything. Protecting their offspring is something natural for most human beings and for many other animals, with many parents often risking or sacrificing their own lives in order to protect them.

And not only on a biological level: our culture also places the family and its protection and care, and especially of offspring, as one of the most important institutions. That is why cases like that of Bretón, who murdered his two sons, have shocked society. We are talking about one of the most publicized filicide cases in recent times. AND It is about this type of crime, filicide, that we are going to talk about. throughout this article.

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Filicide: the murder of one's own children

It is known as filicide

the murder of one's own offspring at the hands of one or both parents, regardless of the motive for said action or the methodology used for it. The context in which said murder or homicide occurs can be very variable, and can appear from before psychosis postpartum to the presence of domestic violence or the use of the minor as an object to harm the other member of the family couple.

With respect to the victims, although the filicide does not refer to the age of the victim, as a general rule they have children who are less than six months old are at greater risk of suffering lethal violence from their parents. age. With respect to sex, in Western society no differences have generally been detected in this regard.

It is a crime that most of society considers to say the least abject and unnatural and that is seen by the general as something infrequent, but that although it is not usual, unfortunately it occurs in a greater proportion than it seems to the simple view. In fact, filicide is one of the types of crime that generates the majority of unnatural deaths of children, being a great majority of violent deaths of minors caused by the parents themselves (the percentage of violent deaths of children by persons outside the family is around 25%).

we are before a very serious crime of blood harshly punishable by law, not only due to the fact of killing a person voluntarily but also due to the aggravating circumstance that this is carried out carried out by someone related to the victim, abusing the victim's trust and relationship with the murderer.

In addition to this, in many of the cases we are dealing with a murder in which there was a relationship of dependency and a huge difference in power relations between the two, abusing the difference in physical strength or superiority in age, experience and dynamics of power and dependency for sustenance and even the survival of the victim towards his executioner.

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Filicide or infanticide? differences

The truth is that although the concept is easily understandable, the term filicide is not so known among the general population, the use of the term infanticide being much more common for this type of crimes. However, the truth is that although a filicide can be an infanticide, they are not synonymous concepts but rather have clear differences between them.

In the first place, while infanticide tells us about the cause of the death of a boy or girl by an adult, talking about filicide implies that the author of said death is one of the persons who maintains a filial relationship with the minor: one of the parents.

One aspect that we also have to take into account is that when we think of a filicide we usually think that the murdered person is a boy or girl, but what It is true that the concept actually refers to the intentional provocation of the death of a son or daughter regardless of the age of this one to the.

What are the motivations that filicides usually have?

It is hard to imagine what could motivate a person to actively cause the death of one or more of their own children. However, some authors such as Resnick have tried to make a general classification of the reasons that have manifested themselves in different cases. The research carried out reflected the following categories or types of filicide.

1. altruistic filicide

This type of filicide usually occurs when the child has some kind of medical condition that makes him or is considered to make him suffer all his life, or suffers from some kind of terminal illness. It is about causing the death of the son or daughter as a method of avoiding suffering.

Another subtype of filicide considered altruistic by whoever carries it out is the one that is directly linked to the suicide of the aggressor himself. The father or mother intends to commit suicide and considers that her children will not be able to live or that it would be unfair to abandon them, preferring to kill them before making them face the situation.

2. Generated by psychosis or mental illness

Although the consideration that the people who carry out this type of act are people with disorders is unreal, the truth is that in some cases filicides do occur in the context of illness mental. An example is during some type of psychotic break, in the context of hallucinations or delusions in which the son is confused with a possible enemy, persecutor, murderer, alien or demon. Another option is for it to be given to women with postpartum depression, with the first few days being of special risk.

3. unwanted child

This type of filicide is motivated by the fact that the child in question was unwanted by the parents or by one of them, or by not being able to take care of the minor. Technically, some authors consider abortion as such, although filicide is usually reserved for children already born. A less doubtful and controversial and more direct example is the one that occurs for negligence of the needs of the minor or abandonment of this.

4. accidental filicide

It is considered as such the filicide that did not have the objective of causing the death of the child in question, but that ends up leading to it. It is common in the context of domestic abuse or vicarious violence to bend the will of the couple in the case of gender violence. It can also occur in the context of a fight.

5. Revenge or utilitarian filicide

The death of the minor is used as an instrument of torture and revenge, generally to harm the couple for some type of damage or rejection. It is a type of vicarious violence directed not so much towards the minor himself (his death is the least important thing for the aggressor) but with causing harm to another person.

The filicida: usual characteristics

The fact of killing a child is not something, as we have said before, frequent. However, there are certain circumstances and characteristics that can facilitate the commission of this type of act.

Among them, it has been observed that many of the cases of filicide occur in people with reduced capacity for maternity or paternity. In some cases there has been a deprivation of affection in the parent's own childhood, living the parent-child relationship as something negative in which there has been no love and possibly some kind of abuses.

Other possible risk factors are found with young mothers and fathers, whose first child appears before the age of 19, and with few economic and social resources. Finally, another different profile includes the presence of sadistic and psychopathic characteristics, lack of emotional bonding with the child and use of this as an instrument to manipulate, control or attack the other (this last profile also corresponds to that of the abuser).