The case of 29-year-old Shaquan Duley (pictured above), the South Carolina Mother who smothered her two children to death, strapped them in to their car seats and then let her car roll in to the river -- only later to confess to their murders -- has left people confounded.

Should you be sympathetic to her plight as an unemployed single mother of three with likely little to no support from the father of the children or is she a lowly criminal, a mother that would stoop as low as you could possibly go to kill her children?

The answer probably lies somewhere between those two extremes.Because of the circumstances of the case, many immediately likened it to the Susan Smith (pictured below) case, where Smith drowned her two children in a car and blamed the murder on a black man.

For me, though, the murders reminded me of the 1996 case of Bronx woman Chicqua Roveal, who dressed her children in freshly pressed pants and warm coats before throwing the three of the them off the roof of a 14-story Bronx building and then jumping herself. The day before the murder-suicide, Roveal had reportedly told her mother, who had just moved in with her after a prison stint, that she didn't want to live anymore.

Then there was the case of Staten Island's Leisha Jones (pictured below left). Initially, investigators thought her oldest son, C.J. (pictured below right), slit the throats of his siblings and then set the house on fire. Evidence later pointed to Leisha, though: Investigators found a charred note with the words, "I'm Sorry," which matched Leisha's handwriting, among other details.


And these tragedies aren't just happening in the United States. In a remote village in Bajhang, South Asia -- just two days before the Duley case on August 15, 2010 -- a 35-year-old woman, Sanju Pujara, who was living in abject poverty, committed suicide by jumping in to the Matesanghu Kola river with her two sons, ages 7 and 5, who both died.

For many women who suffer from depression and bear the bulk of the burden of raising kids, there often is nowhere to turn. Dr. Jeffrey Gardere, a clinical psychologist and host of VH-1's "Dad Camp," says that a variety of factors could have played a part in this murder: It could have been a case of postpartum depression that was never diagnosed or treated, or she may have been emotionally unbalanced (suffered from psychosis) or had other mental health issues before having children.

According to Dr. Gardere, though, men kill more often than women. So why is it that these cases of women are so much more disturbing to the public psyche? We talked to Dr. Gardere about the psychology behind these sorts of crimes in an attempt to understand what it could take for someone to take the lives of their very own children.

Aol. Black Voices: In the Bronx case, it was a murder-suicide -- almost as if the mother was thinking,"I don't want you to live a miserable life and especially one without a Mother." It's strangely selfish and self-sacrificing. Is it more common for Mothers to commit suicide afterward?

Dr. Jeff Gardere: I don't think it's more likely. I think what happens often is that people who kill their kids become so despondent, so delusional that they feel that they did something so heinous by killing their children that they need to kill themselves too. Or what they had planned on doing was killing themselves, but they don't want to leave their children behind.

BV: How unusual is it for a Mother to kill her children?

JG: It is very unusual. It happens, but it's very unusual. On average, 200 children are killed by their parents a year -- I think that's the statistic. But on death row, there are approximately 11 women on death row for killing their children. I think [Duley] probably lost her mind. Was she psychotic? Probably not. Was she crazy to the point where she could do something so evil? Definitely.

BV: What do you think would drive her to do it? The media has talked about her being unemployed added to the stress of her mother berating her and I'm assuming she didn't have support from the father. Is that likely part of the reason she snapped or is it some other mental illness?

JG: It's probably a combination of both. I have kids, sometimes you really get angry, and we love our children. And I would think Mothers have a bond with children that's stronger than the bond that Dads have. So to kill your children -- and I know this woman probably loved her children -- but for her to kill her children tells me it's not just about anger and it's not just about not having resources. At some point some insanity played its way in there.

BV: What did you think about the fact that this is a black woman?

JG: The dynamics were different for Susan Smith; it was that she wanted to be with this guy. For Duley, it was the cycle of poverty and how it affected her and how she probably never had the resources to begin with. So race, even though it gives a different dynamic, I think in this case it really wasn't an issue. The Sheriff in this case, in my opinion, was a little too understanding, he kept giving excuses or reasons as to why she did it -- she was stressed or whatever. I've never seen that before. Maybe because they have seen more of these cases.

BV: Yeah, it seems a lot of people have been more sympathetic than they should be.

JG: Right, at the end of the day we have two children dead and a woman going to prison.

Duley's case also reminds me of the enslaved African women who jumped off of slave ships, with their children in their arms. They committed suicide and killed their children rather than be sold into slavery. While I'll admit that, that's a stretch in comparison, the high level of desperation on the part of these women is a theme in all of the cases except Susan Smith. Human beings often commit the worst acts once they've lost faith in a brighter tomorrow.