American women, we need to talk.
As a mother, watching the Lindsay Clancy case unfold in my home state of Massachusetts has been incredibly difficult.
Three children are dead. Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, just 8 months old, were killed by their mother, Lindsay Clancy. Her defense has argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was therefore not criminally responsible. The prosecution has argued otherwise. Those are questions for a jury to decide, and I am not going to pretend that I know everything that was happening inside Lindsay’s mind when her children died.
However, the reaction to this case has troubled me deeply. Women have come out in droves to support Lindsay. There have been videos, posts, and even a “Same Lindsay” trend. I have witnessed some of this spectacle and found myself both sickened and embarrassed as a woman.
To be clear, I believe postpartum mental illness is real. Postpartum depression is real. Postpartum psychosis is real. Mothers who are struggling deserve compassion, treatment, and support. But compassion does not require us to pretend that everything is normal. Sometimes genuine compassion requires us to say, “Something is wrong, and you need help.”
When Empathy Becomes Toxic
Empathy isn’t a bad thing. We might see a mother struggling and think, What if that were me? We imagine her exhaustion, fear, hormones, and sleepless nights. That empathy can be beautiful. But when our desire to understand someone becomes so strong that we forget about the person who was harmed, something has gone wrong.
We can believe Lindsay Clancy may have been suffering terribly, advocate for better mental health care, and feel sorrow for what she may have experienced. None of that requires us to diminish the lives of Cora, Dawson, and Callan.
Nothing a child does makes that child deserving of violence. And nothing an adult goes through makes that child less worthy of protection. Someone’s suffering does not transform wrong into right. It does not make the victim less important. That should go without saying.
When Dysfunction Becomes “Normal”
Yes, motherhood can be difficult and exhausting. At times, we lose our patience, cry in the shower, or hide in the bathroom for five minutes just to be alone. Some days, we might call a friend or loved one, go for a walk, or eat cookies in the closet just to take a moment to regroup and get through the day.
But there is a tremendous difference between saying, “Motherhood is hard, and sometimes I need help,” and saying, “It is normal for mothers to become so out of control that they might hurt their children.” It isn’t normal.
If a mother is genuinely afraid that she might hurt her child, we should take her seriously. Someone should take the baby, stay with her, and help her get professional care. That is compassion. What isn’t compassion is turning frightening behavior into social-media drama or entertainment. It isn’t compassion to tell struggling mothers that losing control to the point of potentially harming their children is simply part of motherhood.
We shouldn’t shame mothers for struggling, but we shouldn’t glorify dysfunction either. And yet, that is exactly what is so concerning about the current social-media trend of mothers recording their meltdowns. Frustrated mothers are setting up cameras and recording themselves throwing ice into bathtubs, pouring water on their children, growling at them, and engaging in other nonviolent behaviors in an attempt to release their anger without physically hurting their children.
Why are we turning this into content?
Think about what is actually happening when a mother says she is overwhelmed and then sets up a camera to record her meltdown. She has to stop, reach for the phone, position the camera and press record. Then she has to go through the experience knowing that someone is watching or might eventually watch. That is profoundly different from an exhausted mother spontaneously losing her patience.
If a mother is so overwhelmed that she feels compelled to document herself in the middle of a breakdown, that isn’t something we should be laughing about or applauding as “relatable.” It may be a cry for help.
We have created a culture increasingly shaped by reality television, where anger, grief, marital conflict, parenting struggles, arguments, tears, breakdowns, and our most vulnerable moments can become entertainment. We watch other people’s lives, comment on them, and identify with them and say, “Same.” That should concern us.
A woman may genuinely believe that recording herself throwing ice into a bathtub or growling instead of screaming is a way of showing solidarity with other overwhelmed mothers. She may genuinely believe she is saying, “You’re not alone.” But there is a difference between supporting someone in crisis and celebrating the crisis itself. There is a difference between finding healthy ways to cope and turning the struggle into entertainment. There is also a difference between telling another mother that she isn’t alone and telling her that her dysfunction is normal.
What About the Children Behind the Camera?
Our children should never be used as props in our stories. They are people with their own dignity, their own emotions, and their own right to privacy. A child shouldn’t have to wonder whether Mom’s worst moment—or his own worst moment—is going to become tomorrow’s viral video.
As much as we concern ourselves with showing other mothers that they aren’t alone, we should also ask what we are teaching our children when their most vulnerable moments become part of content created for an audience. A mother may not intend to exploit her child. She may simply be exhausted and trying to find a way to cope. Yet, good intentions don’t mean we should stop asking hard questions.
These moms should be asking themselves, “Is this helping my child, or am I using my child’s distress—or my own—for attention?” There is a difference between privately admitting, “Today was really hard,” and publicly turning the hard moments of motherhood into entertainment. The child doesn’t get to choose whether that moment is filmed, and he doesn’t get to choose who sees it. The child doesn’t get to choose whether strangers laugh, comment, share, or identify with it.
The appropriate response to a crisis is not to grab a camera. Find other ways to deal with your feelings. Pray. Turn on a show for the kids and take a few minutes to breathe. Pick up the phone and call someone who can help or simply listen. Call your husband, your mother, your sister, a friend, your doctor, or a crisis line. Let someone into the mess.
Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can say to another woman isn’t, “Girl, same.” It’s, “I’m glad you told me. Let me listen. Let me help you.”
Some things need intervention, prayer and help.
Unborn Children’s Lives Matter
It’s interesting that our culture sometimes seems more concerned about protecting the feelings of adults than protecting vulnerable children.
Cora, Dawson, and Callan could not advocate for themselves. They couldn’t ask someone to intervene. They were completely dependent upon the adults around them for protection. That should make us think about another group of children who are completely dependent upon adults for protection: children in the womb.
Here in Massachusetts, our laws increasingly reflect a willingness to treat the circumstances surrounding an unborn child’s existence as justification for intentionally ending that child’s life. People use language that can make this easier to accept. We say “pregnancy” instead of “child,” “fetal anomaly” without acknowledging the tiny human being who may have a disability, and then we call ending that child’s life a “choice.” This is where we need to confront an uncomfortable contradiction.
Under Massachusetts law, a viable fetus can be recognized as a human being for purposes of homicide in circumstances where someone unlawfully causes the death of a pregnant woman and her unborn child. Yet Massachusetts law also permits abortion under circumstances in which that same unborn child can be intentionally killed.
Think about the contradiction. If someone intentionally kills a pregnant woman and her unborn child, we recognize that two human lives have been taken. If that same child’s death is intentionally caused through abortion, the law treats the situation fundamentally differently.
How can the same child be a human being worthy of protection when someone else kills him, but somehow not worthy of protection when his own mother chooses to have him killed?
The law may distinguish between these circumstances, but biology doesn’t. A child does not become more or less human based upon his location or on who intends the child’s death.
So, what exactly are we normalizing? A frightening cultural shift is taking place before our eyes. Cultural shifts rarely happen all at once. More often, something that once horrified us slowly becomes understandable. Then, it becomes acceptable. Eventually, questioning it is treated as the extreme position. When we repeatedly teach ourselves that one human being’s suffering, circumstances, or desires can justify intentionally ending the life of another innocent human being, we are removing moral boundaries altogether.
Imagine if Cora, Dawson, and Callan had still been in the womb when their lives were intentionally ended. The law would have treated those deaths very differently. If we are horrified when a mother intentionally kills her child after birth, we should be willing to ask why we are less horrified when that same child is smaller, younger, and hidden from view.
Compassion Should Protect Both
We can talk about postpartum mental illness and the difficulties of motherhood. Mothers should be able to say, “I am not okay,” without shame. We should teach husbands, families, doctors, churches, and communities how to recognize when a mother is in crisis. When a mother says, “I’m afraid I might hurt my baby,” the appropriate response is not: “Girl, same.” It should be, “Let’s get you help.” And if necessary, “I’ll stay with you. You are not alone, and we’re going to make sure your baby is safe.” That is what real compassion looks like.
I don’t know what will ultimately happen in the Lindsay Clancy case, and I don’t pretend to know exactly what she was going through. What I do know is that we should not confuse compassion with normalization. A suffering mother doesn’t need an audience cheering her darkest moments. She needs someone willing to sit beside her, take her seriously, and help her through the darkness. And her children need someone willing to protect them.
Perhaps it is time we stopped asking, “How can we make this behavior feel normal?” and started asking, “What can we do to make sure no mother ever has to face that darkness alone and no child ever has to pay the price for it?”
Compassion should never require us to stop telling the truth, and protecting vulnerable people means protecting the vulnerable even when they cannot speak for themselves.
