American parents commit filicide on an average 3,000 times a year, according to a study of data from the last 32 years
Researchers studied the country's data that involved over 94,000 arrests between 1976 and 2007, they also analyzed the database of Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Reports. They found that 14.9 percent of cases were of filicide.
The study findings showed that more male children (58.3 percent) were victims of filicide compared to females. Around 11 percent of those killed were stepchildren.
The researchers found that among those committing crime, fathers were likely to be the alleged murderers of children aged more than a year and especially when the children were adults (fathers were the offenders in 78.3 percent of those cases), reports Times of India.
In 57 percent of the cases, fathers were the accused. The researchers also found that chances of a father killing a son were 29.5 percent compared to 22 percent of instances where mothers killed their sons. However, mothers were more likely to murder their daughters (19.7 percent) as opposed to 18 percent of cases where fathers killed their female children.
The study also focused on the kind of killing method parents mostly used. The researchers stated that parents used "personal weapons" such as beating, choking, or drowning of victims to end their lives. These "personal weapons" were used in 69 percent of murders of infants.
But this was not the case while killing a child who reached adulthood. The researchers found that parents most commonly used firearms to murder their children (in around 72 percent of the cases).
The paper is published in the March edition of the journal Forensic Science International.
