Baaer Meinhof and Baby Killers...

I'm going to start this blog post by introducing you to the "Baaer Meinhof" phenomenon. This is essentially a named phenomenon that you will have almost definitely experienced without realising it was named.
The Baaer Meinhof phenomenon is that temporarily bizarre stage in life where you learn, hear or see a new piece of information, commit it to memory and as a result begin seeing it everywhere.

This is exactly what has inspired this blog post, and before I start I want to state that I realise this topic is controversial. I don't claim to be an expert, I am simply a student formulating my thoughts on this topic.

On Thursday the 3rd of October, I watched part two of the harrowing and challenging documentary "Women Behind Bars" presented by Trevor Mcdonald. The documentary followed the famous newsreader around Indiana Women's Prison and Rockville Correctional Facility as he interviewed a select few of the female criminals that were imprisoned there.
It occurred to me just how strange it was to see so many women in prison, before realising that almost every program about state prisons, or even the criminals caught on Motorway Cops, feature male criminals. It could be because females are associated with maternal instinct and care-giving, but there was an undeniable sense of two juxtaposed ideas aligning in this documentary. A typical stereotype of society...

The phrase 'Maternal Instinct' is often thrown about. With it, come idyllic images of mothers and their infants in perfect harmony. The untouchable protection that the mother has for her child is one that features relentlessly in literature and stories. So what happens when this 'instinct' isn't present? And more pressingly, why isn't is there?

One of the prisoners that Trevor Mcdonald interviewed, was Dawn Hopkins. Dawn had been incarcerated for 15 years for “battery and manslaughter” of her own three-month-old baby Noah, and was going to be released in the near future. What struck me was the way in which Hopkins told Trevor what she'd done. She portrayed the incident as a brief lapse of empathy and judgement that lead to Noah dying of Shaken Baby Syndrome. Yes, she shed a tear whilst explaining how she called 911 to get instructions to resuscitate him, but it really does beg the question: what kind of force possesses a mother to turn against her own newborn child?

The only feasible explanation surely, is that the woman was suffering from some kind of mental illness - a post-partum psychosis causing a shift in their right mind.

Since Thursday's program, I have been experiencing Baaer Meinhof phenomenon at every turn. By strange coincidence, two of the stories in the news this week that I have seen have been that of Hamzar Khan, whose mother killed him and left his body in a cot for two years, and the death of Kayleigh Mai Sheard whose parents have been charged with man slaughter and are due in court later this month.

Research by Evan Deneris, Ph.D., of Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, has shown a link between the functioning of the brain's serotonin neurotransmitter system and so called 'maternal instinct'. Mice that carried a mutated version of a gene named "Pet-1" have shown to have a relationship with serotonin systems that are not functioning properly.

Could it be possible that mothers - or indeed fathers- that kill their children suffer from a chemical imbalance in the brain? It would certainly put many people's minds to rest knowing that we can blame biology for such an inhuman act, rather than admit that some people are just plain evil...

If  it turns out that we can blame either neurotransmitters, or even brain anatomy on the mindset of mothers that drives them to kill their infants, then authorities need to address the issue of identifying these individuals before the cause damage to those around them. To the general public, it seems inconceivable that a woman such as Amanda Hutton should be allowed to look after such a young child. She had a history of abuse with her other seven children, and was an alcoholic. Not to mention, she was living in a horrendously filthy house, floors covered in litter, flies congregating along window ledges.Authorities would also need to address the issue of to what extent the punishment should be. If an individual is not in their right mind when they kill, does it make them a bad person? Currently, prison sentences can be reduced if crimes are thought to be a result of mental illness. 

It could be that 'maternal instinct' is ingrained in a female's DNA, or it could be that maternal instinct is learned through the Social Learning Theory. The latter would perhaps explain why children who had alcoholic or drug-abusing parents often grow up to fall into the same routines as their parents.

But whatever the answer, the fact remains that there are children at risk of the same fate as Noah Hopkins and Hamzah Khan, and we need a find a way to prevent these things from happening.