The trial of Casey Anthony, the 25-year-old mother who was accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, has filled the American conscious for the past few months. Her “not guilty” verdict in July caused a nationwide outrage, blowing up social media networks and water cooler chats with a united hostility toward the unfit mother and the jurors who let her off the hook. It seemed that the entire nation, minus those 12 jurors assigned to the case, were ready to hang her the minute Nancy Grace started talking about it. Cases of mothers killing their kids is not something new, but it’s something that seems to be gripping us more and more, and eliciting a stronger reaction. So what drives a mother to kill her child, and why are we, as Americans, so uproarious about it?

A variety of factors can trigger a mother to go off the deep end and murder her offspring. In a situation like Casey Anthony’s, although she was found not guilty, she was clearly not ready to be a mother. More concerned with partying and living a “normal” life of a twenty-something, some mothers may be driven to the brink by selfishness and resentment toward a child who is stifling their fun.This me-me-me culture, which has lost focus on responsibility and honor, may lead a mother to get rid of any obstacles standing in the way of what she wants.

In the 1994 case of Susan Smith, selfishness was undoubtedly a factor. Similar to Anthony, Smith claimed that her children had gone missing. She apcarjacked her and drove away with her two sons, 3- year-old Michael Daniel and 14-month-old Alexander Tyler, still in the car. After a nationwide search and investigation, she confessed days later to drowning her children by letting her Mazda Protégé roll into a nearby lake. Her motive, according to Kathy Kemp in an April 2005 issue of Birmingham News, was “her desire to win back the affections of [Tom Findlay, a wealthy local man],” who wrote Smith a letter shortly before the murders saying that he didn’t want children. Smith was so consumed with the relationship that she did what she thought she had to, the unthinkable, to get it. Americans retaliated with contempt and revulsion toward the mother, who was sentenced to life in prison.

Of course, mental illness and the highly common postpartum depression may also play a part. Psychology Today writer Mark Levy documented in a November 2002 issue of the publication, “Up to 80 percent of new mothers experience mild depression within a year of giving birth,” adding, “If the ‘baby blues’ persist, depression can escalate to dangerous levels, influencing some women to experience psychosis and—in rare and tragic cases—to kill their offspring.”

Andrea Yates, a Texan who killed her five young children in 2001 by drowning them in her bathtub, had been suffering from severe postpartum depression and psychosis for years prior to the drowning. Yates was sentenced to life in prison after her conviction of capital murder, a sentence which was later overturned on appeal by reason of insanity. She was prone to episodes of psychosis, but had started taking twice the recommended maximum dose of the antidepressant Effexor a month prior to the tragedy by doctor’s orders (a prescription not uncommon in these circumstances), which may have pushed her over the edge. “Homicidal ideation” was added to the drug’s warning label as a rare adverse event in 2005. Whether the drug was to blame or not, the root problem was her postpartum depression, a serious mood disorder stemming from the emotional “letdown” following childbirth. Most women experience the letdown to some degree, but it usually dissipates on its own. In the case of Yates and others, it can also spiral out of control.

And then there’s the increasing prevalence and acceptance of abortion. Whether or not you believe that abortion results in the killing of a child, it is an easy way to “fix” the mistake of an unplanned pregnancy. Some women may carry out the birth of a child, and then, feeling that the burden is too great, decide to undo their decision through gruesome means.

This seemed to be what Dominique Cottrez was doing. The French woman confessed last year to smothering eight newborn children at birth and then hiding their bodies between 1989 and 2006. Two were found buried in the back of a neighbor’s yard, while the rest were discovered in plastic bags in her garage. Cottrez has two older daughters with her husband, Pierre- Marie, who claimed to be oblivious to what was going on due to his wife’s plump frame, which hid the signs of pregnancy. During the trial, prosecutor Eric Vaillant stated, “She explained she did not want to have any more children and that she did not want to see a doctor to obtain a method of contraception,” adding, “Due to her stoutness, her first childbirth did not go well at all. And because of this, she did not want to see a doctor.”

So why do these cases cause such a commotion among us? Could it be our heavy Puritanical conscience that makes us cast stones as fiercely as a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel? Probably not. Could it be our penchant for condemning others? Maybe. Could it be our insatiable appetite for the most gruesome of tales? Quite possibly. Why did the Casey Anthony trial and aftermath consume us for months? In the words of Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri in a July issue, “Perhaps the simplest answer to why the story captivated is the dull tautological, ‘It did because it did.’ We talked about it because everyone was talking about it. It caught at something indefinable in the air.”

Casey Anthony will undoubtedly become a millionaire after all the interviews and book deals are said and done. And we, in our indignation about the tragedy, will undoubtedly tune in. ¶