Filicide

The killing of one's own child by a parent, a criminological and legal term broader than infanticide, which in a number of jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom's Infanticide Act, applies specifically to the killing of an infant under twelve months by its mother. Filicide is most often prosecuted as murder or manslaughter under a jurisdiction's ordinary homicide statutes rather than as its own distinct named offense, though criminologists and forensic psychiatrists treat it as a distinct category of homicide because of recurring patterns researchers have documented in offender motive and mental state, including cases connected to untreated postpartum psychiatric illness, retaliation against a partner, or a parent's own suicide attempt.