American Thinker Column Asks Whether ‘Pathologized Masculinity’ Shaped Two Maternal Filicide Cases

In a commentary published September 12 on American Thinker, columnist Jeannie DeAngelis advances a provocative thesis: that modern society’s discomfort with traditional masculinity may be shaping how some women perceive—and in extreme cases, harm—their young sons. The piece uses two high-profile maternal filicide cases as its central evidence.

The article opens with a familiar cultural metaphor: men are from Mars, women from Venus. DeAngelis, writing from an explicitly religious perspective, argues that God created men and women for distinct roles, and that this distinction has been steadily eroded by feminist ideology. She cites the late British sociologist Ann Oakley’s 1984 book Taking It Like a Woman, quoting Oakley’s assertion that a world without men would be “softer, kinder, more loving; calmer, quieter, more humane.”

What follows is an attempt to reconcile that ideological hostility toward maleness with empirical realities that complicate it. DeAngelis notes that male fetuses die in utero at higher rates—roughly 10 percent more stillbirths than female fetuses—and that infant homicide data from 2017 to 2020 shows boys dying at 8.22 per 100,000 births compared to 5.95 for girls. The implication is that males are more vulnerable from the start, yet treated as threats to be managed.

The Clancy Case and the Question of ‘Difficult’ Boys

The column devotes substantial attention to the Lindsay Clancy case, in which a Massachusetts mother was accused of strangling her three young children before the proceedings ended in a mistrial. DeAngelis focuses on how Dawson, the Clancy’s young son, appears to have been treated differently from his sister Cora and his infant brother Callan. According to the column, autopsy findings showed more pronounced petechiae on Dawson, suggesting he struggled more. DeAngelis asks whether Lindsay’s characterization of Dawson as “the most difficult human I have ever encountered” reflects a broader cultural lens through which energetic little boys are seen as problems rather than simply children.

The heartbreak in the piece arrives through the father, Patrick Clancy, whose 911 call is described. Upon finding Dawson, he reportedly referred to the boy as “my buddy, my little boy, my buddy”—a devastating contrast to the mother’s clinical description of her son.

DeAngelis then connects this to a second case in Frankfort, Illinois, where Corie Walsh, a 40-year-old woman described as deeply interested in the Clancy trial, allegedly killed her two-year-old son Barrett by ligature strangulation. Authorities say Walsh described the toddler as “the devil” and “the anti-Christ.” While Barrett’s siblings survived, the column questions whether any mother would use such language for a female child.

“When was the last time any of us heard a woman call a female child a ‘devil’ or ‘anti-Christ’?” DeAngelis writes.

Men in Retreat, Boys in Peril

The column’s argument extends to jury dynamics in the Clancy trial, where female jurors reportedly criticized a lone male holdout for refusing to overlook the violent nature of the killings. DeAngelis finds this inversion disturbing: the juror’s inability to “get off the fact” that children were strangled is treated as the problem, rather than the killings themselves.

DeAngelis frames the broader cultural dynamic as a spiritual struggle. She points to biblical passages—Genesis 3:15, Pharaoh’s order to kill Hebrew sons, Herod’s targeting of male children, and Revelation’s dragon seeking to devour the male child—to argue that animosity toward male conduct has ancient roots. The modern twist, she contends, is that this animosity now operates through the language of “pathologized masculinity” and gender ideology, which she says is promoted by “gullible, easily duped gender-identity peddlers.”

The column’s core claim is that men have surrendered their God-given traits under pressure from shaming and intimidation, leaving a void that has made boys more vulnerable. “The retreat has left some men unwilling to assume proper headship,” DeAngelis writes, arguing that the consequences are borne by the smallest victims.

She concludes with the article’s central metaphor: women decided that “in order to survive, the Martians must adapt to Venusian ways,” and the littlest Martians never got the memo.

A Complicated Argument, Emphatically Made

It should be noted that DeAngelis is not making a legal argument about guilt or innocence in either case—rather, she is using these tragic incidents as windows into cultural attitudes. The piece does not present new reporting on the cases but rather interprets publicly available details through a specific ideological lens.

Critics of this perspective would argue that maternal filicide is overwhelmingly linked to severe mental illness, not cultural attitudes toward masculinity. The Clancy case itself involved extensive discussion of postpartum psychosis, and Walsh’s alleged statements about her son being the “anti-Christ” suggest a break from reality rather than a reasoned response to gender norms. The American Thinker column does acknowledge mental disturbance while arguing that cultural narratives can shape how that disturbance manifests.

Still, the questions DeAngelis raises about how boys are perceived—whether energetic behavior is seen as pathology, whether stoicism is read as insensitivity—touch on real debates in parenting, education, and psychology. The column’s leap from those debates to the interpretation of filicide cases is a large one, but it is made with conviction and an unmistakable sense of urgency.

What remains is the haunting image of two little boys, Dawson and Barrett, whose deaths have become symbols in a larger cultural war over what it means to be male. Whether that war had anything to do with their fates is a question the column raises but cannot definitively answer. It leaves the reader with the suggestion that the culture’s contempt for masculinity, however intellectualized, can trickle down in ways that harm the most defenseless—the boys who never received the memo.

Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/09/martians-got-the-memo-baby-martians-did-not/