Abstract
Western culture positions motherhood as a divine calling, and this construct makes the notion that women would harm her children seem baffling and unnatural. This qualitative analysis of news articles seeks to understand maternal violence by analyzing narratives told by women who killed their children. Findings reveal that women who harmed their children portrayed themselves as loving and protective and dismissed their violent actions as accidents or missteps. Women understood society's expectation that mothers be all-loving and all-knowing, and internalized the good mother myth, constructing stories of themselves as caring and nurturing even when their actions were hurtful and destructive.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
38
Issue
1
First Page
5
Last Page
26
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Barnett, Barbara
(2006)
"Embracing the Imaginary Good Mother: Narratives of Love and Violence from Women Who Killed Their Children,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 38:
No.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol38/iss1/4
Copyright
©2006 Iowa Communication Association
