Filicide, the act of a parent killing a child, is the second most frequently committed crime among women in the United States of America. Women commit less than 13 percent of all violent crimes in the United States. Yet, mothers are responsible for fifty percent of all parental murders in America. Fortunately, there are ways of preventing such horrific crimes.

Psychological experts dedicated to homicide cases attempt to decipher the reasons women might have for committing such a crime, by sorting them into five categories. These categories are based on the conditions that led to the crime. These categories are: accidental, altruistic, acutely psychotic, unwanted child, or spouse revenge. The most common of these five categories is accidental. This occurs when physical punishment goes too far, or in some case, when the mother is a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. This is a sickness in which the mother...