Public reactions to Clancy reveal our discomfort with mothers who shatter the ideal of maternal love.

Maternal ambivalence is common, yet we often idealize mothers as unconditionally loving.

The Clancy case gives collective voice to the maternal shadow we would rather keep unconscious.

Regardless of the eventual outcome of the Lindsay Clancy case—a conviction or acquittal—as a Jungian psychoanalyst, I’m not surprised the case has become organized around a striking binary. Clancy is cast in two opposing roles: either the evil, monstrous mother—because a loving mother could never kill her children—or the victimized, mentally ill mother, once a loving mother like any other, who was overtaken by mental illness and failed by psychiatry and the mental health system. That the jurors struggled to reach a unanimous decision reflects our cultural splitting and society’s struggle with motherhood.

A quick summary: Lindsay Clancy admitted to strangling her three children, Cora (5), Dawson (3), and Callan (8 months), on January 24, 2023, before she threw herself out of her bedroom window in a suicide attempt that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Beginning in September 2022, she was seen by at least six clinicians, treated with 14 medications, and sought help at clinics, ERs, and psychiatric hospitals, yet her symptoms became worse. Her legal defense claims she suffered from bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis that, ultimately, led her to believe she heard a voice telling her to kill the children.

The public response mirrors the psychological splitting that surrounds motherhood itself. Perhaps making Clancy either perpetrator or victim is a defense against confronting something disturbing and culturally unspeakable: the shadow side of motherhood and the reality of maternal ambivalence.

A loving mother can feel deeply devoted to her children while also feeling consumed. She may struggle to separate from them yet desperately need the space. Love coexists with anger and resentment,........

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