Transgressing Motherhood: Media Reports on Infanticide

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to understand the discourses on motherhood elicited by media in news articles dealing with infanticide. Applying thematic analysis, we studied news and online comments of a Portuguese newspaper. The analysis of infanticidal mothers reports two different images of these mothers both constructed and profiled by the media and the readers. Women are more penalized based on their perversity, living in better economic conditions, being employed and married, whether by the media or by the readers. They are absolved in accordance with their mental illnesses or poor social and economic backgrounds.

Notes

¹ This crime, since Resnick (1969), is frequently designated by neonaticide when the newborn is aged less than 24 hours.

² For ethical reasons, all names in the news articles were deleted and replaced by letters.

³ The reference to 1 to 5 years of imprisonment in conjunction with no preventive detention prior to trial brings about indignation in many readers.

⁴ Referring to the corpse being placed in the freezer alongside cooked frozen food.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luísa Saavedra

LUÍSA SAAVEDRA is Assistant Professor at the School of Psychology, University of Minho. She currently coordinates a research in Criminology and Social Exclusion.

João Manuel de Oliveira

JOÃO MANUEL DE OLIVEIRA, Ph.D., is Research Fellow at Centro de Investigação e de Intervenção Social at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL). He currently coordinates the research line on gender, sexualities, and intersectionality.