I've noticed a trend whereby women are killing their children if they lose custody.

We all know that women are equally likely to engage in domestic violence, but men are more likely to kill their spouses. Women are more likely to kill their children.

I suspect that many of these murders -- by both the man and the woman -- are either (a) rooted in child custody disputes or (b) an escalation of domestic violence.

We all recognize "battered woman syndrome", but I think there's a male corollary, ie she abuses him for a long period and he eventually snaps. In the case of female-on-male domestic violence I think psychological torture is more prominent than the stereotypical "hitting him with a frying pan" cliche.

Ironically, the Duluth model actually recognizes psychological abuse, but only by the man, even though it's almost certainly more prominent the other way around.

I wonder how many of these "man-kills-spouse" stories are rooted in a profound injustice done to the man?

Obviously I'm not saying retaliatory violence is ever justified, but if we're actually interested in preventing violence against women (nevermind violence against men, obviously) these issues seem highly relevant.

I think two basic measures would drastically reduce the number of women and children killed in domestic violence disputes:

(1) recognize the role that women play in domestic violence

(2) shared parenting. If the assumption is equal parenting rights there would be a lot less drama. I can't stress this enough: imagine how much drama -- up to and including murder -- could be avoided if men and women understood that the de facto arrangement after separation was shared custody.

Women would be much less inclined to use their children as weapons, and men would be much less inclined to fucking murder people.

If the courts were actually designed to put the best interests of the children first (shared parenting) I suspect that domestic violence would decrease dramatically. Of course, an awful lot of lawyers would lose an awful lot of money....