Why Can't I Look Away?: The Mother Who Looked Fine

Part II in a series. Click here for part I.

In January 2023, three young children died in their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Their mother, Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, was charged with murder. Her defense didn't contest that she caused their deaths, arguing instead that postpartum psychosis and medication left her not criminally responsible. After six weeks of trial and 39 hours of deliberation, one holdout juror led to a mistrial on September 4. Whether to go forward with a retrial hasn't yet been decided; the next hearing is tentatively set for November 2.

Then, on October 12, police were called to a room at the Great Wolf Lodge in the Poconos. A 3-year-old boy and his father, Charles Harrison, were found dead. The boy's mother, 27-year-old Metallica Harrison, called 911 herself and has been charged with two counts of criminal homicide. Court documents say she told first responders she had worked hard every day to be the best mother and wife she could be.

Little is known about what happened in that room. I want to be careful, and I'd ask readers to be too. But like many people, I saw the headline and felt my stomach drop.

Most of us carry the assumption that a mother is the safest person in a child's world. Psychologist Melvin Lerner described the "just-world belief," the assumption that the world is orderly and people get what they deserve. When a story threatens it, we reach for an explanation that keeps the danger far from us.

Reaction to the Clancy case split into two camps: She was a monster, or she was ill and the system failed to catch it. Each does the same psychological work: "She was evil" means it couldn't happen in my family. "She was sick" means it can be prevented next time. Each offers the observer safety. Within hours of the Great Wolf Lodge news, the same two camps had formed with almost no facts supporting either side. When something is unbearable, the mind would rather have a wrong answer than none.

For many New York-area families, Great Wolf Lodge is known as a place built around waterslides and birthday parties; plenty of parents debating the news in the carpool line have been there. In my previous post, I wrote that tragedy becomes personal when we can see ourselves inside it. Here the identification is almost total. When the setting is typically joyous joy, the violation hits us even harder.

Much of the fascination with the Clancy case circles one detail: By many accounts, she looked like she was functioning. Harrison's reported words strike a similar chord. For some, the most frightening part of these stories is the possibility that someone who looked fine was not, and no one, maybe not even she, could see it in time. Competence can hide distress. People used to holding everything together are often the last to ask for help, and the last to be asked. It's a pattern I see often.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman described the "availability heuristic": We judge how common something is by how easily examples come to mind. Two vivid cases in close succession can make a rare event feel like an epidemic. A parent killing a child is statistically rare, and when mothers are involved, severe mental illness, stress, abuse, and neglect are frequent factors. I agree with psychiatrists Susan Hatters Friedman and Phillip Resnick that the most useful response is prevention: better screening, better follow-up, and care that reaches mothers before a crisis, not after.

A Word About Media Consumption

Wall-to-wall coverage of tragedy reaches people who are already struggling, and new and expecting parents are especially vulnerable. Intrusive thoughts about harm coming to a baby, including thoughts of harming the baby yourself, are not uncommon after birth. They're distressing precisely because the parent doesn't want to act on them, and they are not a sign that someone is dangerous.

Postpartum psychosis is different: rare, usually sudden in the weeks after birth, and involving confusion, hallucinations, or paranoia. It is a medical emergency, and it is treatable.

This news cycle blurs the two, and so a new mother with a frightening thought may now be afraid to say it out loud. That silence is the opposite of what keeps families safe. If you're a parent having thoughts that scare you, tell a provider. If you love a new parent, ask how they're really doing, and make it safe for them to answer honestly.

Signs it's time to step back

• You're watching trial clips or reading updates late at night and struggling to sleep.
• You're scanning yourself or your partner for signs of danger.
• You feel unusually anxious around your child, or avoid being alone with them.
• You can't stop thinking about the children involved.

If that's you, talk with someone you trust or your provider.

These cases raise real questions: how to recognize when a parent who looks fine is not, what postpartum care should entail after the six-week checkup, how courts should weigh severe mental illness against responsibility. Those questions deserve our energy; speculation about a family we know nothing about does not. Four children and a father have died across these two cases. The most useful thing we can do with our fascination is to turn it toward the parents in our own lives.

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