The Lindsay Clancy case caused an incredible shockwave through the Western world and, for a time, all eyes turned to this case of a mother who strangled her three young children to death. Disgustingly, not everyone paid attention to the case because they wanted to see justice done to the mother/murderer, Lindsay Clancy.
Some people made it a socio-political issue, with Clancy's innocence being a victory point for a fight against systemic oppression and/or the "patriarchy."
As I wrote previously, feminists were quick to defend Clancy for reasons that were as gross as they were idiotic. The idea they pushed is that women should not be held accountable for their own actions when their own hormones are raging, which, as I said, is not a very empowering position to take:
The feminists are now telling us that women's bodies can make them behave unpredictably, and society needs to do what it can to help women when they become like this, because they're not capable of doing it on their own. The "Same, Lindsay" crowd sends the signal that they're easily overwhelmed and get into their own heads about everything, causing them to always be on the verge of a mental breakdown or having one.
If you ask me, this new message from feminism doesn't paint women in a very friendly light. This new narrative makes them seem untrustworthy, incapable, and fragile both mentally and physically. A complete 180-degree turnaround from the messaging we've been getting for decades.
But as I also wrote, I was worried that this kind of sentiment would start causing other women to follow in Clancy's lead and begin killing their children.
Has that happened?
Yes and no.
As Isabel Brown points out, there definitely is an uptick in the number of reports coming out about mothers murdering their own children, leaving the question as to whether or not we're experiencing a wave of Lindsay Clancy copycat killers.
We've been hearing about an INSANE increase of mothers killing their own children in what appears to be a generational shift toward violence. But do you think that's because the media is just reporting on it more, or is it a new normal we've already culturally accepted? 🤔 https://t.co/eKaDeBh13T
— Isabel Brown (@theisabelb) October 9, 2026
But breaking it down into statistics, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) reports that from 1999 to 2023, a whopping 3,974 incidents of filicide occurred. Meaning that hundreds of children are killed every year by their own parents; you just don't hear much about it because these cases rarely become national headlines.
What we do have, according to various media reports, are mothers who are murdering their children with Clancy's name attached, due to her becoming the face we put on the act. As you can see in Brown's post, some family and friends feared Clancy's influence was on the person who inspired the murder of their children, and that's probably true. Copycat killers are a thing, and the Clancy case caused some women to personalize Clancy in a way and become emotionally attached to her.
The honest truth is that, at this moment, we don't know if we're seeing an increase in filicide from the Clancy case because we're too close to the event for us to get the full data. Moreover, not every act of filicide we'll see in the data in the future will be stamped with "Clancy Copycat" either. Not that the boost will be enough of an indicator. That alone will tell us a story.
But right now, what we have is a case of the media finding a new vein to mine. In a way, I'd say their continued efforts to throw Clancy into the spotlight would do more harm than good, but in another way, it may not be the worst thing in the world that filicide itself has a spotlight put on it. I don't want to encourage more with media saturation, but I do think that this is a problem that should be addressed and rectified to the best of our ability.
What rectification looks like is the real question now, because that will be one of the ways we either diminish filicide or exacerbate it.
