It's all about her, isn't it?

Jagat · July 3, 2001

<h3>It's all about her, isn't it?</h3>

Andrea Yates killed her children, but to our pundits she's a really harassed housewife, not a multiple murderer

Mark Steyn (National Post)

What do you have to do to get a bad press these days? By her own admission, Andrea Yates of Houston killed all five of her children. Not in a burst of gunfire, but by methodically drowning them in the bathtub.

Anyone who's tried to give an unwanted hair-wash to a kid will appreciate the effort involved in holding five struggling youngsters under water. The oldest, seven-year-old Noah, was the last to die. He ran, for his life. But she caught him and dragged him back to the bathroom, and forced him under, legs kicking, arms flailing. He was old enough to know, as he looked up and fought against the weight of her hands, that his own mother was killing him.

What we're dealing with here is a sickness. Not Andrea's, but everybody else's. The husband, Rusty, set the tone. "I'm supportive of her," he said. "The woman here is not the woman who killed my children ... That wasn't her; she wasn't in her right frame of mind." You can say that again. In fairness to Mr. Yates, as he showed off the happy family snapshots to interviewers, he was either in a state of shock or covering his ass. Andrea had been not just on antidepressants but also on Haldol, a very strong antipsychotic drug. To be just the teensy-weensiest judgmental about these things, if your wife's on Haldol, you probably shouldn't leave her at home all day every day, alone with five children under the age of eight. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out, though by strange coincidence Mr. Yates is: He's a computer expert at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

According to Officer Frank Stumpo, who found the bodies, the house was filthy. Mr. Yates was used to the mess: Offered a drink of water by Officer Stumpo, he said he doubted the cop could find a clean glass. But he evidently didn't think the domestic chaos portended anything more significant.

And, once he'd given the thumbs up to stick by the missus, everything else fell into place. Andrea's family insisted she'd always been a wonderful mother until the "postpartum depression" thing got out of hand. The usual mound of memorial teddy bears piled up on the lawn. And the media scrambled for their rolodexes to get hold of the experts.

It turns out the expert on postpartum depression is Marie Osmond. As in Donny and Marie. Miss Osmond is the author of Behind the Smile: My Journey Out of Postpartum and, appearing with Katie Couric, she was full of insights: "She loved her children, she was a caring woman," said Marie. "How else could you explain something like this ...? The fact is, Katie, you know, men come home to the wife, not the house, children come home to the mother, not the toys ... We're just expected to do all of it nowadays, and I think by trying to do all of it, I think stress could be a big factor -- lifestyles, diet, nutrition ..."

The trick with this kind of story -- some nobody kills some other nobodies -- is to figure out what the big picture is -- or, more crudely put, what's in it for me. For Ted Kennedy, it's about the "Patients' Bill of Rights" he's trying to get through the U.S. Senate.

"We've all been reminded in this country, in these 24 hours, like never before, about the challenges of depression," he announced at a press conference for his bill, "and what it means not only for an individual, but what it means in terms of families."

Under Ted's bill, the Andreas of this world would be able to sue their HMO for prescribing and/or not prescribing the right and/or wrong medication. That way Andrea could collect millions, move to another state, maybe start a new family!

One in 10 women suffers from postpartum depression, one in 1,000 suffers from postpartum psychosis. But that doesn't mean you -- yes, you, at the back, with the frazzled look and the nursing bra -- aren't on the verge of killing your kids. As Newsweek's Anna Quindlen sighed on behalf of mothers everywhere, been there, almost done that. Anna knew what it was like to be "tired" and "hot" after she'd "been up all night throwing sheets into the washer because the smaller of her two boys has projectile vomiting."

"She could have been me. Or you," pronounced Susan Kushner Resnick of Salon. "She didn't want to kill her children. No sane person would." But motherhood'll do that to you. It's a tragedy -- not that the children died, but that it took their deaths to draw attention to the pressures mothers are under.

As they say in her husband's line of work: Houston, we have a problem. Not Andrea Yates' problem, but a much wider one. "Postpartum depression" certainly exists, though whether in most instances it's just a fancy name for an entirely natural discombulation by a life-changing event is another matter. But, as Thomas Szasz writes in his book The Untamed Tongue, "What people nowadays call mental illness, especially in a legal context, is not a fact, but a strategy; not a condition, but a policy; in short it is not a disease that the alleged patient has, but a decision which those who call him mentally ill make about how to act toward him."

That's well put. You hunted your seven-year-old through the house, pulled him back to the bathroom and drowned him? Must be postpartum psychosis. "No sane person" would kill her children. You killed your children. Therefore, you're not sane. Human action is gradually being medicalized -- to the degree that a harassed housewife and a multiple killer are merely points on the same continuum. Or as Newsweek headlined Anna Quindlen's column: "Playing God On No Sleep. Isn't Motherhood Grand? Do You Want The Real Answer Or The Official Hallmark-Card Version?"

Okay, you want the real answer? By comparison with the lives of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, women today are living in the peachiest Hallmark version of motherhood. Even Anna. Why, she was "throwing sheets in the washer"! A century ago, there would have been no washer to throw 'em into. And she wouldn't have had a mere two boys, but thrice that number. And don't bleat on about how in those days there was a far greater support structure of extended family. More likely, aside from the 10 kids, the Anna Quindlens of the 1800s would have had an aged relative or two adding to their burdens -- some 14 people living in a quaint old farmhouse that today's realtors would advertise as a "three-bedroom home." And the work they had to do wasn't a little light Newsweek punditry but brutal and back-breaking and unending -- which is why so many of the worn, grey-haired rural wives in early photographs prove on close examination of the dates to be in their early thirties. Poor Anna with her top-loading washer: the most cosseted generation of American mothers ever, and life's still a bitch. And infanticide is merely an understandable by-product of the stresses of domesticity.

No wonder Andrea's lawyer is upbeat about her prospects of beating the rap. If she was as loving a mother as her family claim, she would, now the alleged psychotic raptus has passed, accept the evil she has done and plead guilty, period. But instead she's working out strategy with counsel, because in the end it's all about her, isn't it? And, in that sense at least, the solidarity of the sisterhood is genuine: truly, the narcissism of our age knows no bounds.

July 3, 2001

<h3>Does Addiction Excuse Thieves and Killers from Criminal Responsibility?</h3>

Stanton Peele

Morristown, New Jersey

Recently, the New York Times assessed the value of the

Helmsley real estate empire at about $50-$60 billion. Why, then,

did Leona steal a million dollars or so by casting personal expenditures

as business expenses—a figure so piddling in light of their

net worth that the Times predicted the family would "not

have to liquidate even a small part of its holdings" in order

to pay any fines arising from Leona's conviction? The crime was

clearly an act of irrationality on Leona's part, like a millionaire

shoplifting. It should be obvious to any trained clinician that

Leona is suffering from addiction to greed, a compulsion to extract

financial advantage in the most trivial ways, even when the potential

gain has no possible impact on her well-being.

This would probably have been the most successful defense her

lawyers could have presented in court. Indeed, Leona's failure

to claim she was addicted could be used as proof that she

is addicted, since one of the primary traits of addictive diseases

is "denial" that one has the disease of addiction. Denial

might also have been the reason Joel Steinberg disregarded his

attorney's advice to claim that cocaine addiction caused him to

kill his "adopted" daughter, Lisa. However, although

the addiction defense was not formally presented to the jury,

some jurors later said they did not vote for the more serious

murder charge (Steinberg was convicted of manslaughter) because

the killer had been using cocaine for so long they felt his judgment

was impaired.

Some killers have subsequently rethought their failure to use

addiction defenses, and have appealed their convictions on this

basis. Jean Harris was one such person. Shana Alexander, in her

book Very Much a Lady, presented the case that Ms. Harris

was suffering from amphetamine withdrawal when she shot Dr. Herman

Tarnower several times point blank. Alternately, of course, Harris

could have claimed that she was driven to kill by the mental abuse

Tarnower perpetrated—a variation on the battered-woman syndrome—or

that she was distraught from his waning love for her, a case of

withdrawal from love addiction. If these diseases caused Harris

to kill Tarnower, the argument is, then her "denial"

of these diseases would also prevent her from relying on the diseases

as a defense strategy. (Jean Harris's appeal in this case was

unsuccessful.)

In these crimes, the evidence for addiction is the puzzling nature

of the crime itself—why do well-to-do or educated people kill

or steal without any possibility of gaining anything of real value

for themselves? Think about petty shoplifting in a store like

Bloomingdale's. Like Leona Helmsley, most of those who shoplift

in fashionable department stores do not materially alter their

lives by their theft. Rather, they shoplift because they want

something badly but may have forgotten their wallets, or their

spouses have been checking their credit-card receipts to uncover

unwise impulse purchases, or it just makes them feel good to get

something for nothing. Really, the motivations to steal are not

that different for the well-off financially and the poor. A robber

or a drug dealer can often get a job and a decent lifestyle, only

this would involve more work for less gain, and the thief prefers

the thrills and rewards of the criminal lifestyle.

Why people make these choices may be interesting grist

for criminological study. But it is irrelevant to law and punishment.

As the proliferation of crime-causing diseases makes obvious,

there are a host of motives that feed into people's stealing,

killing, drug-taking, etc. We have laws against these behaviors

because they are wrong and because it is hard to manage a society

when people (as more and more do) readily satisfy their personal

urges at the expense of others. And trying to assess the combination

of motives that drives people to commit crimes serves primarily

to invite the more resourceful criminals to present the most saleable

excuses for their misbehavior.

The starkest example of a crime that shocks and puzzles us so

much as to stand as an excuse for itself is infanticide. The typical

defense in such a case—one that has now been recognized in several

trials—is "postpartum depression." The essential logic

of this defense is "What sane person would kill her own newborn

child?" Relying on this defense in 1988, pediatric nurse

Ann Green was acquitted in New York of all criminal charges for

killing two of her newborn babies and trying to kill a third.

Note that Green's condition extended well after the births of

her three children, since she then had to cover up the crimes,

become pregnant, and kill (or try to kill) again. Apparently,

though, those who accept or even promote the postpartum defense

find it hard to comprehend such heinous crimes as crimes—to

do so is simply too staggering. After a California court exonerated

a 24-year-old woman who had argued that she was suffering from

"baby blues" [or postpartum psychosis] when she ran her automobile

over her infant son and then left the body in a trash can, her

family stood and applauded the verdict in the courtroom.

Of course, allowing postpartum blues to excuse those who kill

or maim their children seems to counteract the current campaign

against family violence in America. That is, at the same time

as we strive to uncover and reduce child abuse, we broaden the

legal excuses for parents who abuse their children—in particular

those who kill them. This is a considerable number of people—103

children died at the hands of their parents in New York City (two

a week) in 1987; 126 (10 a month) were killed by their parents

in 1988. While the Steinberg case attracted much attention because

of the middle-class status of the parents, it was the exceptional

case: how much have you heard about the other 102 children aside

from Lisa Steinberg who died in New York at the hands of their

parents or guardians in 1987, the large majority of whom were

minorities and/or poor?

The Ann Green case was covered in a book:

THE MAD, THE BAD, AND THE INNOCENT: THE CRIMINAL MIND ON TRIAL

by Barbara R. Kirwin

(Here are two New York crime stories: Ann Green, having smothered two of her infants and having tried to kill a third, was acquitted by reason of insanity; released after two weeks in a mental institution, she returned to her job as a nurse. Colin Ferguson, who mowed down 25 people on a commuter train, was adjudged competent to stand trial -- representing himself, he opened by announcing that he was charged with 93 counts because it was 1993 -- and drew more than 300 years in prison. In a system that has spent centuries trying to calibrate criminal punishment and personal responsibility, how do these things happen? 26 October 1997)

Harvard University Press:

http://mail.h-net.msu.edu/~pcaaca/chorba/19971226.html

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