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Postpartum depression/psychosis is only one part of the problem when we talk about infanticide.

We leave mothers in particular and parents in general alone to do a very difficult job.

Before a mother breaks down, she needs help and support.

Recently, The New Yorker published an article about filicide. It focused on one case in particular—and it was not the case of Lindsey Clancy. This was the case of Nakira Griner, a New Jersey mother accused of killing her toddler in 2022.

I would like to make three points regarding these two cases—and the many others like them that occur with frightening regularity.

One of the points made in the article is that the media attention has been on Clancy rather than Griner.

Clancy is white. Griner is Black.

2. Interpretation matters.

When a white middle-class mother murders her children, we tend to talk about mental health. When a Black mother from an impoverished background is accused of killing her toddler, we tend to talk about murder.

This is important—and, obviously, egregiously unfair.

In both cases, a crime was committed. And in both cases, it is likely that psychosis played an important part. And when it comes to filicide, as is true with many brutal crimes, it is hard to know where to draw the line between severe mental illness and criminality.

3. These deaths have to do not just with the difficulties of diagnosing postpartum psychosis but also with the failure of our society to support parents and families.

The deaths of these children occurred within a specific context—and that is the context of a society in which parents are left completely alone to fend for themselves.

In the United States in particular, and in the developed world in general, more parents live farther away from and are more cut off from their families of........

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