With Good Reason

It seems like only yesterday that the Andrea Yates child murders started to fade from the collective consciousness. Recall Mrs. Yates, who sequentially drowned her five children in the family bathtub before notifying her husband, was originally convicted for first-degree murder but had the verdict overturned and was committed to a mental institution due to severe depression. A recent AP wire carried a similar story for another disgruntled Texas housewife:

A stay-at-home mother in an affluent Dallas suburb fatally shot her husband and two children as they slept before killing herself, police said.
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Detectives were reviewing a suicide note left in the house, where Andrea Roberts killed her husband, Michael Lewis Roberts, and children, Micayla, 11, and Dylan, 7, police said. Each had a single gunshot wound to the head.

The article contains quotes from neighbors who have only positive things to say about Andrea Roberts and her family:

“They seemed like the ideal couple, the ideal mom and dad,” said Warren, who has lived next to the Roberts for about seven years. “Their kids were their lives.”
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“She would always volunteer and step up,” Carson said. “One of her biggest flaws was she couldn’t say no.”

While details are still forthcoming, there is a very good chance that Ms Roberts will be publicly diagnosed with some kind of severe depression or mental illness. Later revelations will probably detail extensive use of drugs to treat those illnesses, along with a litany of small warning signs behind Roberts’ June Cleaver facade. In other words, it will be a repeat of the Andrea Yates saga, albeit with a more tragic (or satisfying, if you’re more revenge-minded) ending.

What makes a mother depressed enough to kill her children? Perhaps the question should be “what’s making so many mothers so depressed in the first place?” After all, as traditionalists would have us believe, a woman’s place is in the home. Baking cookies and changing dirty diapers are supposed to provide complete spiritual, physical and mental fulfillment. Feminists and career-women are said to be in denial about their natural role and will eventually “come around”.

These traditional beliefs seem to sustain via the belief that women were happy with sex roles before the rise of radical feminism in the 1960’s. In particular, the 1950’s is held up as a paragon of social order. However, as reported in a recent Toronto Star article, the traditional roles were maintained using very unnatural means:

Citizens there excitedly turned out to watch the unearthing of a 50-year-old time capsule – a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere loaded with artifacts of its era. Among them, a “typical” woman’s purse which contained bobby pins, gum, loose change, a compact, cigarettes, an unpaid parking ticket … and a bottle of tranquillizers.
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The fact that the town officials considered a purse containing tranquillizers – as well as a photo of a 20-year-old bride – as representative of womanhood in 1957 reveals much about the tenor of the times.
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“What was that culture saying about women?” says Toronto therapist Barbara Everett, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Mental Health Association (Ontario). “That this was as common as lipstick, that they needed to be drugged.”
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Valium was followed by tricyclic antidepressants such as Elavil. Then came the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Paxil, etc.) and a host of sedatives (Halcion) and anti-anxiety drugs (Ativan, Xanax). Some are combos – such as Effexor – and are advertised in women’s magazines as aids for overcoming stressful social situations.

The article goes on to state that women are still outrank men by more than 2:1 for prescriptions of antidepressants and tranquilizers. The Canadian Mental Health Association is reporting that post-partum depression –a major source of these prescriptions- affects up to 80% of new mothers (source: aforementioned article).

Context aside, most people would agree that a life sustained by powerful sedatives and psychotropic drugs isn’t a natural life at all. Some of us might even call such people junkies. Can we therefore continue to claim that every woman’s destiny is invariably in the home?