When we think of a mother, we think of unconditional love, warmth, honesty, and compassion—someone who is inviolable. But what about the psychopathic mother? What can her children expect?

In very blunt language, preeminent psychopathy expert Dr. Robert D. Hare states, “Psychopaths see children as an inconvenience.” He continues, “Indifference to the welfare of children – their own as well as those of the man or woman they happen to be living with at the time – is a common theme in our file of psychopaths.”1 He refers to the case of Diane Downs as an extreme example of how this indifference manifested in homicide.2

Diane Downs was convicted of shooting her three children, killing one of her daughters, and permanently disabling her two other children. In the book Small Sacrifices, Ann Rule writes, “Her kids seemed like a pain in the ass to her … she felt that kids were inferior ... ."3 Downs did the shooting because her then boyfriend did not like having children around.

During the course of Diane Downs’ trial that led to her imprisonment, she was found to be neglectful and abusive to her children, leaving them emotionally scarred. Her eldest daughter Christie testified at her trial that her mother had done the shooting. Christie had remarked that “her mother didn’t love the family…and after the shootings, said sadly, ‘Mom didn’t even say ‘I’m sorry.’” 4

Most parents with high levels of psychopathic characteristics are not murderers in the........

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