Society has failed to unpack the madness of motherhood. The lifelong responsibility of caregiving is often reduced to smiling women cooing at babies on television and glossy Instagram photos of perfectly poised tots celebrating their birthdays or the holidays. Only when something unconscionable happens does anyone think to examine the tax of motherhood and how it might impact someone’s mental health.
In 2013, a 39-year-old Senegalese Frenchwoman named Fabienne Kabou sat her 15-month-old baby on the beach in Berck-sur-Mer, France, and let her get carried away by the sea. It was a horrific crime that shocked the country and fascinated documentary filmmaker Alice Diop, who was pregnant at the time of Kabou’s 2016 trial.
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