They call it "Filicide"; a growing phenomenon that has many in clinical environments scratching their heads; and here's  reasons why:

 

In Canton Ohio, somewhere between town and country, the body of a pregnant woman who was due to give birth in a matter of days, lies decomposing under the summer sun.  Previously, the father - a Canton Ohio Policeman -  apparently did not know what happened to her.  California's Scott Peterson is sitting on death row for the murder of his wife and unborn son, and Utah's Mark Hacking shot and killed his pregnant wife and threw her body inside a trash bin; and there are countless of others who haven't frayed the news wires to date who exercised a similar pattern of killing.  Stories like these continue to dress the front page of the morning papers or hold a spotlight on the nightly news; and just as the viewing public attempt to comprehend the tragedy they just heard, here comes the little snippet of news that Paris Hilton was freed from jail. 

 

Maybe society is missing the boat here; but the family structure is under assault and have always been for quite some time.  When a family member murders his/her loved one(s), it is assumed that there are deeply rooted causes that were either never addressed or were always manifest.  Rarely is it a sudden condition that randomly takes hold of the brain, as if by some alien force, and causes the host to embark on a killing spree unless hallucinating drugs or psychiatric drugs with bad side effects were involved. Quite often too late, the powder keg comes with a missing pregnant body, and only the killer knows what methods of madness he used to end two precious lives.  It is the resounding knell of a silent gun, a slit of a knife, a ligature of some sort, or some other kind of lethal ending that indicate how fed up he really was of loving her for better or worst. The latter surficing because death had ultimately done them apart.  

 

Behavioral scientists, psychologists, and others who study infanticidal causes for years, reason there are many factors involved that would led an otherwise perceived "normal" father to kill the mother of his child(ren).  Dr. Philip J. Resnick - a Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Forensic Psychiatry, at the University Hospitals of Cleveland, Department of Psychiatry and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland - outlines five psychological assessments in The Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and Law as to why a parent kills his/her children.  According to Dr. Resnick (2007), the disorders are: (1) Altruistic - "Murder committed out of love to relieve the real or imagined suffering of the child", the journal defines. (2)Acutely psychotic - command  hallucinations to kill the child (3)Accidental (4)Unwanted child, and (5)spousal revenge.  All of these clinical conditions are precursors to violence that ends with the death of a child and its mother.  In the case of N0.5, according to Dr. Resnick's definition, a bitter husband or wife may kill his/her child out of some sordid vindictiveness - to get back at their spouse.  That seems to be prominent in many divorce cases. Although these psychological reactions offer a glimpse of what could be behind the warped mind of a man who decides to kill his pregnant wife, no apparent cause will account for the innocent lives lost; perhaps it will offer some solace in the medical communities as they define such causes and aim to counter impending cases before they hit the media.

 

Fathers are suppose to be loving providers and protectors of their families; but as the recent wave of fathers killing their children, pregnant wives or girlfriends reveal that the medical forums discern the need to re-defined fathers with issues that are unaddressed; fathers who also suffer from some sort of depression. 

 

In the article: "Sad Dads: Paternal Post Par dum Depression" published in Psychiatry MMC (2007), editors, Dr. Pilyoung Kim and Dr. James E. Swain, label the phenom as "PPPD-Paternal Post Par dum Depression". It gives attention to the plight of new fathers or fathers-to-be who may be suffering from mental and emotional stresses of their own.  Dr. Kim and Dr. Swain (2007) states: "Fathers also experience significant changes in life after childbirth, many of which are similar to the experiences [sic] of mothers. Fathers must also adjust to an array of new and demanding roles and tasks during the early postpartum period. This critically depends on the level and quality of cooperation between the mother and father".  Traditionally, Post Par dum disorder was associative of new mothers; the condition having extremes as in the case of Andrea Yates who drowned all five of her children.  As doctors examine the current "trend" of new fathers and fathers-to-be who are killing the mothers of their unborn or born progeny, immediate attention is a focus in order to devise preventive measures in an effort to address and curtail further filicide incidents before it becomes an epidemic.