Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Feb;29(2):87-111.
doi: 10.1177/10778012221077127. Epub 2022 Apr 12.

Parricide, Mental Illness, and Parental Proximity: The Gendered Contexts of Parricide in England and Wales

Caroline Miles  1 , Rachel Condry  2 , Elspeth Windsor  1
Affiliations

Parricide, Mental Illness, and Parental Proximity: The Gendered Contexts of Parricide in England and Wales

Caroline Miles et al. Violence Against Women. 2023 Feb.

Abstract

Parricide is underresearched in the UK, and the contexts of this gendered form of violence are poorly understood. Heide's typology provides an advanced understanding of parricide in the United States, where the majority of parent-killings involve firearms. This article develops a UK-based analysis of the contexts of parricide, combining national statistics with police case study data (n = 57) and case review data (n = 21). Our findings indicate that mental illness plays a key role, combined with a gendered context of "parental proximity" and the simultaneous responsibilization and marginalization of parent-victims (particularly mothers), supporting the need for feminist analyses of parricide.

Keywords: femicide; matricide; mental illness; parental proximity; parricide.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Bakker I. (2007). Social reproduction and the constitution of a gendered political economy. New Political Economy, 12(4), 541–556. 10.1080/13563460701661561 - DOI
    1. Baxter H., Duggan C., Larkin E., Cordess C., Page K. (2001). Mentally disordered parricide and stranger killers admitted to high-security care 1: A descriptive comparison. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 12(2), 287–299. 10.1080/09585180122057 - DOI
    1. Benbow S. M., Bhattacharyya S., Kingston P. (2019). Older adults and violence: An analysis of domestic homicide reviews in England involving adults over 60 years of age. Ageing & Society, 39(6), 1097–1121. 10.1017/S0144686X17001386 - DOI
    1. Benier K. (2016). Research Brief: Parricide. Gender and Family Violence Monash Arts Focus Program. http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/gender-and-family-violence/files/2016/04...
    1. Bojanic L., Flynn S., Gianatsi M., Kapur N., Appleby L., Shaw J. (2020). The typology of parricide and the role of mental illness. Aggressive Behaviour, 46(6), 516–522. 10.1002/ab.21906 - DOI - PubMed