Maria Colwell, Jasmine Beckford, "Baby P"—every time a child dies violently, the public reels at the suggestion that a parent may have been involved. Carol Anne Davis seeks to answer the question of how the protective instinct sometimes fails and why some parents fatally harm their own children. Examining the tragic phenomena of infanticide and child murder, she explores cases of neglected or abused children who grow up to batter their own babies, religious and sexual taboos which lead to so called "honor killings," as well as the processes of score-settling in relationships, postnatal depression, psychosis, and many other murder triggers. The cases include the most recent and harrowing case of Mick and Mairead Philpott who killed six of their children in an arson attack on their own house.