ABSTRACT

Parents Killing Children: Crossing the Invisible Line explores hidden forms of violence within the family. This socio-legal study addresses the interactions between the family and the state, focusing on six parent perpetrators and the ways in which child endangerment is concealed within society.

Drawing on symbolic interactionism, mythology and a modelling of case study data, this book puts forward a unique conceptualisation of representation and risk, both on familial and state levels. The failure of the state to intervene and neutralise volatile perpetrators also sheds light on the socio-legal status of children – society’s most vulnerable – and the book concludes by discussing means by which the underlying social conditions and maladies symptomatic of child abuse and killing should be addressed.

chapter |46 pages

Introduction 1

chapter 1|59 pages

Introducing the six filicide cases

chapter 2|36 pages

Symbolic representation

Forms of filicidal violence

chapter 3|29 pages

Mythical representations

From myth to law

chapter 4|32 pages

Modelling representation

chapter 5|40 pages

Theorising representation

chapter 6|22 pages

Masculine representations

Loving fathers? Failed representations leading to risk 1

chapter 7|26 pages

Risky representations