By Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer

Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer don’t write for news magazines or prime-time investigative television shows, but the stories they tell hold the same fascination. When Mothers Kill is compelling. In a clear, direct fashion the authors recount what they have learned from interviewing women imprisoned for killing their children. Readers will be shocked and outraged—as much by the violence the women have endured in their own lives as by the violence they engaged in—but they will also be informed and even enlightened.
Oberman and Meyer are leading authorities on their subject. Their 2001 book, Mothers Who Kill Their Children, drew from hundreds of newspaper articles as well as from medical and social science journals to propose a comprehensive typology of maternal filicide. In that same year, driven by a desire to test their typology—and to better understand child-killing women not just as types but as individuals—Oberman and Meyer began interviewing women who had been incarcerated for the crime. After conducting lengthy, face-to-face interviews with forty prison inmates, they returned and selected eight women to speak with at even greater length. This new book begins with these stories, recounted in the matter-of-fact words of the inmates themselves.
There are collective themes that emerge from these individual accounts, including histories of relentless interpersonal violence, troubled relationships with parents (particularly with mothers), twisted notions of romantic love, and deep conflicts about motherhood. These themes structure the books overall narrative, which also includes an insightful examination of the social and institutional systems that have failed these women. Neither the mothers nor the authors offer these stories as excuses for these crimes.

New York; London: NYU Press, 2008. 208p.

By The World Health Organization

This report focuses on the interpersonal violence that accounts for most acts of violence against children, and includes child maltreatment, bullying and other types of youth violence, and intimate partner violence (1). Although childhood exposure to interpersonal violence can increase the risk for subsequent selfdirected violence (including suicide and self-harm) (2) and the likelihood of collective violence (including war and terrorism) (3) – and similar root causes underlie all three forms of violence (3,4) – these forms of violence are not covered by the report.

Geneva, SWIT: WHO, 2020. 352p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

  Some 47,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members in 2020. This means that, on average, a woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes. Where trends can be calculated, they show that the magnitude of such gender-related killings remains largely unchanged, however, with only marginal increases and decreases over the past decade . However, according to WomenOnGuard an estimated 48,000 women and girls were killed by family members in 2022.

Vienna: UNODC, 2021. 34p.

By Mary Catherine Maternowska; Alina Potts and Deborah Fry

Vulnerability to violence evolves in complex socio-economic and cultural contexts. This locally driven research analyses how institutional, community, interpersonal and individual factors interact to affect violence in children’s lives. It also begins to identify pathways to better inform national prevention strategies. The study places age and gender at its center, focusing on girls and boys at different stages of the life course, from the very young to older adolescents. A cornerstone of the study is to link quality research, translating it into evidence, and turning evidence into effective and meaningful interventions. This snapshot provides insights to the complexities that surround violence. Understanding and responding to the political as well as community contexts in which violence occurs builds more meaningful responses. Country teams are now preparing to move to the field and test best approaches to violence prevention based on evidence and using data to drive change.

New York: UNICEF, United Nations Children's Fund, 2017. 10p.

By David A. Green

This title examines the role of political culture and penal populism in the response to the emotive subject of child-on-child homicide. Green explores the reasons underlying the vastly differing responses of the English and Norwegian criminal justice systems to the cases of James Bulger and Silje Redergard respectively. Whereas James Bulger's killers were subject to extreme press and public hostility, and held in secure detention for nine months before being tried in an adversarial court, and served eight years in custody, a Redergard's killers were shielded from public antagonism and carefully reintegrated into the local community. This book argues that English adversarial political culture creates far more incentives to politicize high-profile crimes than Norwegian consensus political culture. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research, Green suggests that the tendency for politicians to justify punitive responses to crime by invoking harsh political attitudes is based upon a flawed understanding of public opinion. In a compelling study, Green proposes a more deliberative response to crime is possible by making English culture less adversarial and by making informed public judgment more accessible.

Oxford University Press. Oxford. 2008. 353p.