Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 36

Childfree organisations warn women not to have children if they aren’t prepared to end up as single parents: after all, even the most committed mother can lose her partner to death or divorce. Single mothers who find that they cannot cope tend to relinquish custody to the child’s father or to their own parents or, much more rarely, to the state.

But Susan Smith and Diane Downs rejected these options in favour of murdering their children and pretending that a stranger did it. This gave them the opportunity to reinvent themselves as free and single, something which their new boyfriends desired.

Both women had difficult childhoods which included sexual abuse: they were left with borderline personalities in which they swung from the emotional state of ‘motherhood is everything’ to wanting their offspring permanently out of the way.

Borderline personalities can put on a wonderful act, in this case acting out the role of the perfect mother, but deep down they are completely self-absorbed and have very little to give to other adults, far less a needy child. They feel totally adrift as single parents and will do anything to attach themselves to a man and to keep him, even when he wants to leave. Chillingly, both Smith and Downs have expressed the desire to have further children – and, during a brief escape bid, Diane Downs did her utmost to become pregnant again.