Why did people change their assessment of Andrea Yates?

When the story first broke, I heard many people express deep empathy for Andrea Yates. “I know how she felt. Any woman burdened with a screaming kid, let alone a house full of them, getting four hours of sleep, eating cold Spaghetti-os and scraping dried cereal off the carpet is, sooner or later, going to contemplate smashing a pillow over the little one’s face(s) so she won’t have to hear ‘mommy mommy mommy’ any more.”

I heard it here, I heard it from cow-orkers, I heard (read) it from Anna Quindlen and Sandy Banks (columnists), and I heard it from my own mom. (I didn’t ask my MIL because I didn’t want to dispel the positive image I have of her.) Everyone seemed to agree that actually killing one’s childen was horrible, but wanting to do so was perfectly natural.

But when the trial began, then it was all about post-partum psychosis and AY not being responsible for her actions. That may in fact be the case, but I don’t want to discuss it because that’s not why I’m opening this thread. I’m opening it because I’m wondering why everyone seemed to do a 180 on their assessment of AY. Now everyone’s saying, “AY was insane because only a psychotic would even think about killing her children. I would never do that to my kids if I were in my right mind.”

I agree with the current view, with the caveat that IANAD, or a mother. But the earlier assertions creep me out. Last fall, I was looking over both shoulders, wondering by how narrow a margin I escaped death simply by behaving in a manner consistent with my age and development.

So which attitude is accurate? Sane women never think about killing their children, no matter how cumbersome they are? Or yearning for the peace that a carefully placed pillow would bring is within the bounds of sanity?

And most importantly, can a mother have the latter opinion and still truthfully say that she loves her children?

Can you just clarify for me…

Are the same people who said “I understand how she felt” in the beginning now saying “AY was insane because only a psychotic would even think about killing her children.”, or are we talking about two different groups of people?

cazzle, I’m just not sure.

I haven’t read anything from Quindlen or Banks on the subject of the trial, so I don’t know if their opinions have changed, although they may have. I’m no longer working at the same place I was when the story broke, and I haven’t done a search to see which TMs posted what at that time, and what, if anything, they’re saying now. The only person who I know has changed her tune is my mom. (I didn’t call her out.)

But I heard “I know how she felt” a lot last year, and now I’m hearing a lot of “She had to be insane”. What I’ve not heard is anyone saying, “Y’know, last year, I said I felt empathy with her, but now I’d like to retract my statement.”

Not that anyone has to retract such a statement. But last year, the subject of post-partum psychosis was barely touched on, while the recent trial hinged on it. I just haven’t heard anyone claiming that they support AY’s actions without the diagnosis of PPP, whereas last year, many people were claiming that she simply “snapped”, and that anyone could have done the same.

It’s not exactly rational to think that a “carefully placed pillow” would bring peace. Obviously, it brings police, trial, and punishment.

I would wager the guess that while a lot of parents might understand contemplating the impluse, no one can accept that Andrea Yates is innocent of a crime. Criminally insane, yes, innocent, no.

I dug up Quindlen’s column. Mods, I hope it’s okay for me to quote one paragraph.

“But there’s another part of my mind, the part that remembers the end of a day in which the milk spilled phone rang one cried another hit a fever rose the medicine gone the car sputtered another cried the cable out “Sesame Street” gone all cried stomach upset full diaper no more diapers Mommy I want water Mommy my throat hurts Mommy I don’t feel good. Every mother I’ve asked about the Yates case has the same reaction. She’s appalled; she’s aghast. And then she gets this look. And the look says that at some forbidden level she understands. The look says that there are two very different kinds of horror here. There is the unimaginable idea of the killings. And then there is the entirely imaginable idea of going quietly bonkers in the house with five kids under the age of 7.”

To be perfectly fair, elsewhere in the column, Quindlen did acknowledge Yates’ mental illness. My mom, the TMs and others did also. But at the time, AY was alleged to have post-partum depression. It wasn’t until her arrest and subsequent psychiatric evaluations that post-partum psychosis was specified. Now it seems that people are avoiding allegiance with AY, on the grounds that someone suffering from PPP does not reason as they themselves would have.

It seems that the people who favored a “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict are claiming that AY’s lifestyle and lack of support from family members furthered her psychosis. That may very well be true. But previously, I was hearing people (not necessarily the same people, but they might be) suggest that leading that lifestyle and being denied support could inspire such thoughts, and the additional burden of PPD, not PPP, could push someone over the edge.

IOW, currently I’m hearing, “She couldn’t help it because she was psychotic.” But last year, some people were saying, “She’s human, and she acted on thoughts that any human would have in her situation.” I’m just wondering why I haven’t heard that lately.

…is not that only a psycho would even think about killing her kids. It’s that only a psychotic would folow through with the act, and as such should always be found not guilty on insanity b/c they are psychotic.

In other words, how I’m interpreting Widespread Public Reaction is this: “I want to kill my kids sometimes but never actually would…but if I did, I don’t think it would be fair or just for you to send me to jail. Because I’m psychotic.”

Of course, noteveryone who is psychotic from the psychological definition http://www.psych-net.org/disorders.html#OTH
meets the criteria for being not guilty by reason of insanity, which differ state to state.

My own 2 cents…you are also reading/watching the turn in the reporting of the news. This is not a complete explanation, but might have a little to do with your perception.

At the beginning I recall that the press reports presented friends who were sympathetic to AY’s condition.

Toward the end we were getting many soundbites from the general public who did not know her.

Well, if you really want to know what I think . . .

It’s gotten to the point now where much of our society is now extremely uncomfortable with the the idea that any action can be defined as irredeemably wrong, or worse yet, “evil”, especially when it’s committed by one of the groups of people that we cloak with a higher level of moral sanctity. There has to be some mitigating circumstance to demonstrate that everything is relative, after all, and women and/or minorities who commit horrible acts are really just reflecting their own victimhood at the hands of a cruel husband, a cruel society, or cruel order of nature.

We tend only resort to the last defense–cruel nature–when we are truly desperate to find a reason not to alter our relativistic world view. It was a close call–this world view could have been seriously challenged when confronted with the horrific spectacle of a woman deliberately chasing down each of her five children and drowning them one after another in a bathtub. We’re gnawed by a distressing suspicion . . . could there really be such a thing as evil after all? Well, we protest weakly, nature is cruel to make us mothers, and all mothers are tempted to lash out as victims in this way.

Meanwhile, we keep on the lookout for a better excuse. And indeed, one is promptly discovered! A cruel society has failed to cradle poor psychotic Andrea in its collective arms, stroking her head with soothing “there, there’s”, while pumping her up with psychiatic drugs. The cruel jury, taking only three hours to deliberate before rendering a verdict! The cruel Texas criminal justice system, for placing the bar so high for an insanity verdict! The cruel religion of Christianity, for its implicit role in driving Andrea to murder!

But best of all–best of all–is now we can insinuate blame on a cruel husband. Yes, Rusty is the true villain here. Imagine, the evil bastard (never mind the contradictions here) has just had his whole family destroyed, left with absolutely no one, and he has the gall to think about remarrying and having more kids! He’s the one who should be locked up!

So I think the answer to Rilchaim’s question is this: now that more handy excuses have come along, there’s no need to go back to the desperation tactics of simply blaming the natural function of motherhood. Indeed, it would be a little embarassing to place the two ideas side by side: (1) Andrea deserves sympathy because every mother is tempted to kill her kids, and (2) Andrea deserves sympath because any mother who’s seriously tempted to kill her kids is clearly insane. No, we’ve now settled on a sufficiently comforting paradigm and it’s best that we stick with it.

By the way, I believe that Medea’s Child could testify that a mother can indeed make a perfectly sane decision to kill all of her kids . . . indeed, given all that she supposedly suffered at Rusty’s hands, I tend to suspect that Andrea’s motivations were not that dissimilar to Medea’s . . .

Well said, Reilly.

Uh…Do I want to know the story behind your reference to Medea’s Child?

You can get the story from Euripides.

Doghouse Reilly: “It’s gotten to the point now where much of our society is now extremely uncomfortable with the the idea that any action can be defined as irredeemably wrong, or worse yet, “evil”, especially when it’s committed by one of the groups of people that we cloak with a higher level of moral sanctity.

Say what???

Since it’s clear that you’re talking about women and minorities here, please find me an example of what you mean–i.e., any citation in which either of the latter is cloaked “with a higher level of moral sanctity.”

What’s ironic about you’re implying here is that there was a time (roughly speaking from the middle of the eighteenth to about the middle of the twentienth centuries) when women were routinely believed to have a different and, in certain respects, higher morality. That is, they were thought of as “angels” with more refined hearts (but also less fine-tuned heads) than their male counterparts.

And I’m certainly not suggesting that this way of viewing women has entirely disappeared, nor that new ways of seeing men and women as fundamentally different (as in the current craze for Mars/Venus shlock) haven’t cropped up. But I don’t see how you can connect these morphings of the double standard to minorities.

“There has to be some mitigating circumstance to demonstrate that everything is relative, after all, and women and/or minorities who commit horrible acts are really just reflecting their own victimhood at the hands of a cruel husband, a cruel society, or cruel order of nature.”

Well, now you’re on more familiar ground here, complaining that women/minorities get more of a break than do white men. But doesn’t this conflict with your “higher order of moral sanctity” argument? That is, it’s a bit different to say “This group has a higher morality than this group” than it is to say “This group is more victimized than this group,” isn’t it?

Moreover, it’s important to recognize that, on the whole, the kind of people who tend to make the second argument (more victimization), are usually very opposed to the biologically-founded double standard articulated in the first (innate differences of morality between men/women).

“A cruel society has failed to cradle poor psychotic Andrea in its collective arms…”

Oddly, I haven’t heard a single person say that society ought to have done more to help Yates. I’ve heard a vocal minority of people saying (and I am one of this vocal minority), a) why did the husband exercise such unconscionably poor judgment and b) why is it necessary to punish a crime committed by an obviously insane person?

I’m curious Doghouse, do you think that insanity just doesn’t exist? That is, do you think that it’s just a figment of the imagination for those who can’t nail down their tales of victimization?

Or, does it exist, independently of any double standard, for some people (such as white men) but figure only as an exonerating excuse for special classes of others (non-white or non-men)?

“But best of all–best of all–is now we can insinuate blame on a cruel husband. Yes, Rusty is the true villain here. …He’s the one who should be locked up!”

Can you please find one citation from anyone who is actually saying this in the public eye? (Bear in mind, given the nutters who sometimes make it into print or on TV I’m not saying you won’t succeed.) That said, it’s sure not what I’m hearing or reading, and it’s definitely not what I’m reading on the Straight Dope. Check out the last few relevant threads on this Board and you’ll see that those who “blame” Yates’s husband blame him for his negligence, not for “evil,” nor even for his insensitivity. They blame him–let me simply say–I blame him because I don’t think it’s a rational act to leave five children in the care of a suicidal woman whose been recently diagnosed with depression and psychosis.
Any reasonable person, charged with the care of those children, ought to have been able to predict that either Yates herself or the children were in danger under these circumstances.

If you are a father, I ask you, would you leave your infant children in the care of a suicidal and psychotic babysitter?

"*"Indeed, it would be a little embarassing to place the two ideas side by side: (1) Andrea deserves sympathy because every mother is tempted to kill her kids, and (2) Andrea deserves sympath because any mother who’s seriously tempted to kill her kids is clearly insane. **No, we’ve now settled on a sufficiently comforting paradigm and it’s best that we stick with it. *"

And that comforting paradigm is what?

That Andrea Yates deserves no sympathy, she deserves guilt and punishment, because even if she was crazy enough to try to kill herself twice, and to tell friends she was hearing voices, that doesn’t matter.

So actually women aren’t victims, and actually women don’t have a higher morality, actually they’re highly subject to blame after all. Fallen Eves (the construct of Yates’s own pastor) who should be punished to the full extent of the law when they screw up and act monstrously.

And even if just about any reasonable husband ought to have known better than to have another child with a wife who was losing it on a daily basis, and even if just about any reasonable husband ought to have known better than to leave five helpless children in the care of a known psychotic and suicide, we can just leave him out of the picture.

That’s basically what happened, and, yes, it does indeed contradict the special privilege worldview that you set up early–in which women and non-whites are said to be treated more leniently than white men.

So, lemme ask you, Doghouse, are you ready now to think twice about whether this special privilege worldview really exists?

Because, otherwise, you seem to want to damn women if they do, and if they don’t receive special treatment.

To reconcile

with

…all you need to do is see that anyone under stressful circumstances is capable of being a psycho. That yes, that psycho Andrea Yates could have been you instead.

Indeed. And the point is that many people reading the story could nevertheless understand how a person not dissimilar to themselves could end up doing such a thing.

It’s interesting that you focus on the “minorities/women” aspect of my argument without addressing its more fundamental premise: that the conflicting public reactions to Andrea Yates’s deed have a common source in moral relativism. The fact that she’s a woman certainly makes it easier to find relativistic justifications for some reason, but you can still find the same kind of thing going on in discussions of deeds committed by white males–such as the treason perpetuated by John Walker Lindh, for example. And I will restrain myself and not say a word about Clinton, I promise . . .

I can’t quite grasp what point you’re trying to make here, and I suspect it’s because you didn’t grasp my point very well either–so please see above for a clarification.

My point wasn’t really about what society should have done before her crime so much as the allocation of blame afterward. Society is blamed as cruel for not giving its tacit acceptance of Andrea’s deed, as reflected in outrage directed toward the jury and toward the criminal justice system.

You’re throwing out quite a few red herrings here that have nothing to do with the points I made. Of course “insanity” exists as a legal precept, which I believe means (basically) being whacked so far out of one’s mind that one literally cannot discern whether one’s action is wrong and/or breaks the law. I’m sure that occurs from time to time, among all demographic groups.

As for accusing me of favoring more lenient treatment for white males vis-a-vis the insanity defense, puh-leeze: you know I said nothing of the kind, and you know that the vast majority of society would not say anything like that either. If Russell Yates had deliberately bought a shotgun, blown the head off of each of his five children, and then calmly called the police afterward and confessed to the deed, do you think the issue of insanity would have even come up?

From the this thread in the BBQ pit:

In the words of the Church Lady, now isn’t that special?

Again, I don’t think you’ve read my post very carefully. I believe that the whole issue is moral relativism, though the condescending manner in which some folks use this to lower the moral bar for women and minorities is certainly an important side issue. I don’t “condemn” anyone, and if you wipe the foam and spittle from your monitor I think you will be able to see that fairly easily. What I did was present a reasonable explanation for the popular cognitive dissonance that Rilchaim noted, a hypothesis that you’ve done nothing to refute or even address.

Calm down and take the chip off yer shoulder, bub.

Well Doghouse Reilly I’m sure glad you explained this. Now I finally understand why the US has such a large prison population and why we execute all those people in Texas and other such bleeding heart states. It also explains the ethnic and racial makeup of our prison population.

Can you muster the cajones to make a straightforward argument, either against my ideas or in answer to the OP? This “retort” is on the rhetorical level of a twelve year old.

Doghouse: "It’s interesting that you focus on the “minorities/women” aspect of my argument without addressing its more fundamental premise: that the conflicting public reactions to Andrea Yates’s deed have a common source in moral relativism. The fact that she’s a woman certainly makes it easier to find relativistic justifications for some reason… "

I think the way you’re defining and applying moral relativism here is pretty slippery. For one thing, an insanity defense is not predicated on moral relativism: it’s predicated on the solidly moral notion that its inhumane to punish people who can’t control their acts. This is the morality of the Enlightenment: that it’s uncivilized to harshly punish those who, like children or the insane, aren’t fully in control of themselves.

Now, let’s say, for arguments’ sake, that women are more successful than men in invoking the insanity defense. That does not necessarily boil down to moral relativism. It might mean that some people are more willing to believe that women are subject to insanity; or it might mean that some people feel more compassion for women defendants than for men. But in neither case is their morality relative since in both cases what they’re saying “I don’t want to punish an insane person as I would a sane person.” What would be relative here, rather than morality, is the assumptions the person holds about each gender.

That may seem subtle to you but it’s actually a very important difference since moral relativism is usually used to describe a kind of postmodern attitude of “anything goes:” no fixed sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. What you seem to have in mind, on the other hand, is best described a double standard based on beliefs about and attitudes towards each sex. This can go hand-in-hand with a very strong and strongly fixed sense of morality. Depending on the circumstances, the double standard sometimes benefits women and sometimes harm them. Ultimately, I’d say, it harms both sexes just because it’s so pernicious.

When you add to that the fact that Andrea Yates was not found guilty by reason of insanity, we also don’t see much of a double standard at work, do we?

I had written previously: “*t’s important to recognize that, on the whole, the kind of people who tend to make the second argument (more victimization), are usually very opposed to the biologically-founded double standard articulated in the first (innate differences of morality between men/women).”

Doghouse replied: “I can’t quite grasp what point you’re trying to make here…”

My point is simply that your post invoked two different ways of differentiating between the sexes. One way is to believe that women, like minorities, are socially disadvantaged with respect to (white) males. Another, much more old-fashioned idea, is to believe that there’s an innate biological difference between men and women (in your example the biological difference is said to translate into women’s have a higher morality, though nowadays it would be more common to have it invoked to say that women are “from Venus”).

My point was that people who argue the first position usually dispute the validity of the second position.

My point was also that where the first position links women and minorities, the second doesn’t since minorities are not generally thought to have a biologically “higher” morality, or, for that matter, to be from Venus ;).

*"

Doghouse: "It’s interesting that you focus on the “minorities/women” aspect of my argument without addressing its more fundamental premise: that the conflicting public reactions to Andrea Yates’s deed have a common source in moral relativism. The fact that she’s a woman certainly makes it easier to find relativistic justifications for some reason… "

I think the way you’re defining and applying moral relativism here is pretty slippery. For one thing, an insanity defense is not predicated on moral relativism: it’s predicated on the solidly moral notion that its inhumane to punish people who can’t control their acts. This is the morality of the Enlightenment: that it’s uncivilized to harshly punish those who, like children or the insane, aren’t fully in control of themselves.

Now, let’s say, for arguments’ sake, that women are more successful than men in invoking the insanity defense. That does not necessarily boil down to moral relativism. It might mean that some people are more willing to believe that women are subject to insanity; or it might mean that some people feel more compassion for women defendants than for men. But in neither case is their morality relative since in both cases what they’re saying “I don’t want to punish an insane person as I would a sane person.” What would be relative here, rather than morality, is the assumptions the person holds about each gender.

That may seem subtle to you but it’s actually a very important difference since moral relativism is usually used to describe a kind of postmodern attitude of “anything goes:” no fixed sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. What you seem to have in mind, on the other hand, is best described a double standard based on beliefs about and attitudes towards each sex. This can go hand-in-hand with a very strong and strongly fixed sense of morality. Depending on the circumstances, the double standard sometimes benefits women and sometimes harm them. Ultimately, I’d say, it harms both sexes just because it’s so pernicious.

When you add to that the fact that Andrea Yates was not found guilty by reason of insanity, we also don’t see much of a double standard at work, do we?

I had written previously: “*t’s important to recognize that, on the whole, the kind of people who tend to make the second argument (more victimization), are usually very opposed to the biologically-founded double standard articulated in the first (innate differences of morality between men/women).”

Doghouse replied: “I can’t quite grasp what point you’re trying to make here…”

My point is simply that your post invoked two different ways of differentiating between the sexes. One way is to believe that women, like minorities, are socially disadvantaged with respect to (white) males. Another, much more old-fashioned idea, is to believe that there’s an innate biological difference between men and women (in your example the biological difference is said to translate into women’s have a higher morality, though nowadays it would be more common to have it invoked to say that women are “from Venus”).

My point was that people who argue the first position usually dispute the validity of the second position.

My point was also that where the first position links women and minorities, the second doesn’t since minorities are not generally thought to have a biologically “higher” morality, or, for that matter, to be from Venus ;).

“My point wasn’t really about what society should have done before her crime so much as the allocation of blame afterward. Society is blamed as cruel for not giving its tacit acceptance of Andrea’s deed, as reflected in outrage directed toward the jury and toward the criminal justice system.”

Okay, but what has that got to do with moral relativism–or even double standard?

The people who are saying this are saying it because they believe that Yates was not guilty by reason of insanity; and/or they believe that Yates’s husband behaved negligently. Both responses rest on a very moral proposition: that justice should be served; that it’s unjust to punish the insane; that it’s unjust to to overlook complicit negligence of one parent while apportioning unmitigated blame to another. People aren’t saying society is “cruel”; they’re saying that mental illness isn’t understood.

“Of course “insanity” exists as a legal precept… As for accusing me of favoring more lenient treatment for white males vis-a-vis the insanity defense, puh-leeze…”

I made no such implication. I merely indicated the obvious flaw in your reasoning. By assuming that those who believe Yates to be not guilty by reason of insanity were responding to her gender, you implied that insanity involving a woman always a question of of her sex. It doesn’t seemed to have occurred to you that people might consider Yates’s behavior (suicides, hospitalizations, diagnoses for psychosis, bizarre murders of her children) prima facie evidence of her insanity with her sex playing little if no role.

Do you, for that matter, doubt that Yates is insane?

“If Russell Yates had deliberately bought a shotgun, blown the head off of each of his five children, and then calmly called the police afterward and confessed to the deed, do you think the issue of insanity would have even come up?”

If he’d had Yates’s past record, yes, absolutely. I believe that if he’d been under a suicide watch, diagnosed as psychotic, etc.,etc. and his wife left him alone with the kids, and he killed them while claiming to hear voices, that that a lawyer might very well advise him to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

I’m curious, btw, why you introduce the shotgun. Surely that is a very different way of killing people and one that might influence a jury one way or another. Do you think it impossible that a psychotic father hearing voices might drown his children?

[citations from the Pit deleted]

“In the words of the Church Lady, now isn’t that special?”

Well I’d say that’s the Pit.:wink: I don’t read any threads in the Pit (or only rarely), so I meant what’s going on in Great Debates, and what’s being said in editorials, talks shows, etc.

“I believe that the whole issue is moral relativism, though the condescending manner in which some folks use this to lower the moral bar for women and minorities is certainly an important side issue.”

And, again, I think what you’re talking about is better described as a double standard.

As I hope I’ve demonstrated, people are not lowering any moral bar for women even if it’s the case that women are statistically more likely to be successful in pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

In addition, Andrea Yates was found guilty and punished to the full extent of the law. So here the double standard did absolutely nothing for her.

At the same time, as Dave Simmons was attempting to say, there’s simply no evidence that minorities (male or female) are given any sort of break by the criminal justice system. On the contrary, minorities are much more likely than whites to be arrested, tried, found guilty, sentenced harshly, and executed. So why you bring them up in this context is just rather bizarre.

“I don’t “condemn” anyone, and if you wipe the foam and spittle from your monitor I think you will be able to see that fairly easily.”

No foam and splittle Doghouse, though your remarks were likely to offend.

As I said in my last, my your logic women are damned if, like Andrea Yates, they’re punished to the full extent of the law, and damned if, like Yates might have been in a different state, found not guilty by reason of insanity. When you add that to your utterly groundless assumptions about minorities benefiting from a lowered “moral bar,” you’ve got ideas that are bound to raise some hackles.

Your thoughts on moral relativism are not, however, offensive; they simply weren’t well-defined. You think there’s a double standard, pure and simple.

Apologies for somehow having accidentally posted two slightly different versions of my own post!