10.03.2012                      16.Adar. 5772                      Ki Tisa

Magazin:

What lies behind a mother's killer instinct?

Motherhood is not about boundless unconditional love and blissfulness, asserts Tamar Hager; in her new novel, the author weaves in two real-life cases of mothers who murdered their children.

In 1878, Selina Wadge, a single mother of two living in Cornwall, England, murdered one of her sons. A man had proposed marriage to her on condition that she bring only one child with her, so Wadge threw 2-year-old Harry down a well. Her acquaintances testified that she was a good mother. In 1877, another mother, Ellen Harper, murdered her newborn daughter.
Were Wadge and Harper insane? Is every mother who murders her child insane? In a new novel, “A Bad Mother” ‏(Dvir Publishing; in Hebrew‏), Dr. Tamar Hager examines what she calls the myth of motherhood through these two extreme cases. The book combines genres − the true story of the two women is combined with fiction − and includes courtroom protocol, census information, letters, newspaper clippings and other documents….