Event: US

The Lindsay Clancy case has taken an odd turn online. Clancy is facing three counts of first-degree murder after her children were found strangled in the family’s Duxbury home in 2023. She has admitted to killing them. Nevertheless, since the trial began in July, a whole internet contingent—seemingly made up entirely of women—has formed around Clancy, convinced that she has been framed by her husband, Patrick. “He did it,” reads one comment on an Instagram video showing surveillance footage of Patrick running errands for the family when, according to the official timeline, the murders occurred. “Look at his shoes, they’re different,” another adds. It is easy to attribute this phenomenon to one too many true-crime documentaries, but the more interesting possibility is that these women are sensing something real. The furor around the case foregrounds a much deeper ambivalence about what modern parenting has become. The case against Patrick begins with a simple accusation: He was a bad father and husband. In the Clancy marriage, many women recognize a familiar pattern—a husband who goes away on too many business trips, has too many comfortable brunches, and makes his wife shoulder too much of the burden. Clancy’s diaries detail her all-too-relatable struggles with motherhood. As author Reshma Saujani writes: “If you are a mother, you could have written any of these confessions.” She continues: “We ask women to do the most physically and psychologically demanding work of their lives with none of the infrastructure that every other wealthy nation considers a non-negotiable.” Lindsay was a loving mother genuinely trying to do her best, writes another commentator in Parents magazine. “It is time we do better—and more—to help the new parents in our lives.” Clancy becomes the emblem for aggrieved mothers who believe they are doing it all and then some, who…

A mother who admitted to killing her three children should not be lionised as a feminist icon. By now, almost everyone in the US has heard about the horrifying case of the Clancy family in Massachusetts. In January 2023, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan Clancy were strangled with exercise bands by their mother Lindsay, in their family home in Massachusetts. Lindsay then attempted to slash her throat and wrists and jumped out a second-floor window. Her husband, Patrick, found her when he returned from picking up a takeaway dinner and medicine for their daughter. He then found the bodies of his children in the basement. Lindsay is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and is currently on trial. Prosecutors say she planned the killings in advance and had sent her husband out on errands so she would have time to do so. Her defence team is arguing that she was not of sane mind, that she was in the grip of bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, and should not be held criminally responsible. Surely the most terrible thing that could possibly happen has happened to this family. And yet somehow, ladies, we have managed to make it worse. I say ‘we’. I’m being imprecise. A particular group of women, spurred on by social media and what looks like a bottomless need for validation, has decided to make a saint out of Lindsay Clancy – of all people. And an even more deranged subgroup has decided that, actually, it was Patrick, the devastated father, who murdered the children and framed his wife. ‘Last week, I thought Lindsay Clancy killed her babies during postpartum psychosis. I now believe Patrick Clancy drugged Lindsay… pushed her out a window, and strangled his children with exercise bands so he could marry his…