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  Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16th, 1581., a painting of the filicide by Ilya Yefimovich Repin.

Filicide is the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own son or daughter. The word filicide derives from the Latin words filius meaning "son" or filia meaning daughter and the suffix -cide meaning to kill, murder, or cause death. "A filicide" may refer to the parent who killed his or her child as well as to the criminal act that the parent committed.

In some cultures, killing a daughter who is deemed to have disgraced the family is a common occurrence -see honor killing.

A 1999 US Department of Justice study concluded that between 1976 and 1997 in the United States, mothers were responsible for a higher share of children killed during infancy, while fathers were more likely to have been responsible for the murders of children age 8 or older.^[1] Furthermore, 52% of the children killed by their mothers (maternal filicide) were male, while 57% of the children killed by their fathers (paternal filicide) were male. Parents were responsible for 61% of child murders under the age of five; filicide is the third leading cause of death amongst American children five to fourteen years old.^[2]

Sometimes, there is a combination of murder and suicide in filicide cases.

  See also

• Binding of Isaac
• Lists of people by cause of death
• Suicide, the killing of one's self

Familial killing terms:

• Avunculicide, the killing of one's uncle
• Filicide, the killing of one's child
• Fratricide, the killing of one's brother
• Mariticide, the killing of one's husband
• Matricide, the killing of one's mother
• Nepoticide, the killing of one's nephew
• Parricide, the killing of one's parents or another close relative
• Patricide, the killing of one's father
• Prolicide, is the killing of one's offspring
• Sororicide, the killing of one's sister
• Uxoricide, the killing of one's wife

Non-familial killing terms from the same root:

• Deicide is the killing of a god
• Genocide is the killing of a large group of people, usually a specific and entire ethnic, racial, religious or national group
• Homicide is the killing of any human
• Infanticide, the killing of an infant from birth to 12 months
• Regicide is the killing of a monarch (king or ruler)
• Tyrannicide is the killing of a tyrant

Also consider filial cruelty (cruelty toward one's own child), child cruelty (cruelty toward an unrelated child), and child murder (the murder of a child in general).

  References

  External links

• Classifications and Descriptions of Parents Who Commit Filicide (PDF)