Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who systematically drowned
her five young children in a bathtub, is on the cover of
newsmagazines and a stunned nation mulls over whether she
deserves the death penalty or should she be institutionalized. As
the details of Mrs. Yates life emerges, she is garnering sympathy
from harried women who empathize with her plight. Others (mostly
men) are comparing her to Susan Smith, the killer mom, who left
her two sons strapped in their car seats while she sank the
family car in the lake, and believe Yates should rot in hell.
Her supporters are prematurely diagnosing this incident as a
result of post-partum depression, a clinical disorder that
follows childbirth and can severely impact the mother. In fact
Andrea Yates apparently had emotional problems predating the
birth of any of her children. There will however still be
innumerable articles on the subject attempting to explain away
the inexplicable.
It wasn’t till I read Anna Quindlen’s article in
Newsweek (Playing God On No Sleep, Jul 2 issue) that I began to
understand why Ms. Yates was getting more support from women’s
groups than Susan Smith received. Andrea Yates was a former nurse
turned stay-at-home mother and according to Quindlen, "
there is the entirely imaginable idea of going quietly bonkers in
the house with five kids under the age of 7."
Nowhere in her column does she stretch her imagination to express
sympathy for the five innocent children, victims of their
bonkered-out mother.
Further on Quindlen quotes sociologist Jessie Bernard commenting
on the institutionalization of motherhood. Clearly it is society
that has forced Ms. Yates to stay at home to provide round the
clock care to her brood at the expense of her sanity.
"Women not working outside their homes feel compelled to
make their job inside it seem both weighty and joyful."
Funny, isn’t it? How columnists who are so adamant about
protecting a woman’s right to choose are so bewildered when
a woman chooses to stay home to raise their children. Lord, she
must be psychotic!
Quindlen completes her thoughts by imagining herself with five
children under the age of 7, and describes the horrible
day-to-day aggravating things that children say and do to drive
us mad. While she stops short of making excuses for Andrea Yates,
she wants us all to acknowledge that deep down feeling that all
mothers feel on a bad day that could possible lead to horrible
things. Sorry, Anna, no can do.
Having been a stay-at-home mother who had at one point five
children under the age of six, I think I can appreciate better
than most what Yates had to deal with. I can also agree that, at
times, motherhood can be overwhelming, even maddening, especially
with little or no help. I, too, spent many sleepless nights with
colicky babies and since I nursed all of my eventual six
children, it was years before I was able to sleep through the
night. Like Yates, I had to deal with caring for a victim of
Alzheimer’s’ because I cared for my mother-in-law until
she passed away last year. Fortunately, by then my children were
in their teens and I had help.
I am no superwoman. While I was frequently overwhelmed by the
work overload and my children’s demands, I had the sense to
know that what I really needed was a vacation. Instead, Andrea
Yates was medicated so she could continue her 24/7 caregiving
duties. One of the meds she was given was Haldol, a drug
frequently prescribed to sedate Alzheimer patients. After
witnessing one pill turn my mother-in-law into a zombie, I read
up on this drug and discovered its possible side effects included
delusions and hallucinations.
Andrea Yates did a terrible thing to her children but I wonder if
her doctors and relatives will ever accept their own
responsibility for the terrible thing that was done to Andrea,
too.