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Updated: Jun 17, 2025

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Bad parents? evaluating judgements of infant homicides
Brandon Sparks1, Katia Vione2, Dean Fido2
1Psychology, Kingston University, London, UK.
Abstract:
While the killing of one's own infant is an undoubtedly harrowing crime, there exists little research exploring attitudes toward these individuals. Such work has focused primarily on depictions of mothers, yet U.K. government data indicate that the majority of infant homicide cases involve paternal suspects. A sample of U.K. residents (n = 245) participated in a mixed-methods design to explore attitudes toward mothers and fathers who have been accused of murdering their infant child and whether parental mental health issues impacted these judgements. Results aligned with the chivalry hypothesis wherein maternal suspects were evaluated more leniently. Qualitative analyses uncovered hidden gender expectations: mothers were ascribed blame when the father was accused of infant homicide, a finding that was not present in the reverse scenario. This suggests that traditional views of motherhood conflict with a shifting social landscape that is seeing an increase in stay-at-home fathers and working mothers.
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