Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 2019 Parents who kill: Media constructions of male and female filicide cases Mary McCluskey
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the Criminology Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, and the Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons Recommended Citation McCluskey, Mary, "Parents who kill: Media constructions of male and female filicide cases" (2019). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 2195. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/2195 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. PARENTS WHO KILL: MEDIA CONSTRUCTIONS OF MALE AND FEMALE FILICIDE CASES by Mary McCluskey Master of Arts, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2019 THESIS Submitted to the Department/Faculty of Criminology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Master of Arts in Criminology Wilfrid Laurier University © Mary McCluskey 2019 ABSTRACT Often, mothers who murder their children are portrayed as “bad mothers”, as “the news media creates monsters out of [those] who transgress what is considered appropriate maternal behavior” (Goc, 2009, p. 42). This is especially important, as the media has created portrayals of females as murderers which are different from portrayals of males who murder their children. Previous research has addressed the association of motherhood in female offenders, however, there is a lack of research that compares the portrayals of females and males who murder their children, formally known as filicide.