{"id":1044,"date":"2023-04-11T19:56:06","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T23:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/?page_id=1044"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:10:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:10:33","slug":"the-law-of-motherhood-in-the-gender-dependent-application-of-criminal-responsibility-for-failing-to-protect-children","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/in-print\/volume-xxiv-issue-1-fall-2022\/the-law-of-motherhood-in-the-gender-dependent-application-of-criminal-responsibility-for-failing-to-protect-children\/","title":{"rendered":"The Law of Motherhood in the Gender-Dependent Application of Criminal Responsibility for Failing to Protect Children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When a child is injured or killed by an adult in the home, a marked gender\u00a0 division appears in the application of criminal responsibility against the non abusing parent. States regularly use accomplice liability\/accountability theory\u00a0 or statutes criminalizing the failure to protect one\u2019s children against mothers\u00a0 for the harm perpetrated by her male partner, but men almost never face\u00a0 charges when the roles are reversed. Although the statutory or common law\u00a0 upon which such prosecutions are based is gender-neutral, the application of\u00a0 the principles is decidedly not.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This Article analyzes and critiques current cultural and legal expectations of\u00a0 mothers that place upon them an increased responsibility for the safety of their\u00a0 children. It analyzes the ways in which the \u201creasonable person\u201d standard\u00a0 morphs into a \u201creasonable mother\u201d standard that is implicitly more stringent\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and punitive than expectations of a \u201creasonable father.\u201d This places dispropor\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">tionate burdens and punishments on mothers, twists the legal concepts of fore seeability, intent, and parental duty while making them contingent upon the\u00a0 parent\u2019s gender, and holds mothers and fathers to disparate standards of care.\u00a0 When the theory is applied against mothers, the standard requirement of crimi nal intent is sometimes stretched beyond recognition. The absence of overt gen der distinctions in the law disguises the fact that the operation of the criminal\u00a0 justice system is deeply informed by and in service to stereotyped social\u00a0 demands of women while it masquerades as a system of neutral, evenhanded\u00a0 justice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2023\/04\/The-Law-of-Motherhood-in-the-Gender-dependent-Application-of-Criminal-Responsibility-for-Failing-to-Protect-Children.pdf\">Keep Reading The Law of Motherhood in the Gender-Dependent Application of Criminal Responsibility for Failing to Protect Children<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a child is injured or killed by an adult in the home, a marked gender\u00a0 division appears in the application of criminal responsibility against the non abusing parent. States [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8524,"featured_media":0,"parent":1020,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1044","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1785,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044\/revisions\/1785"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/gender-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}