Parents as Perpetrators: Criminalizing Sleep-Related Infant Deaths with Dr. Laura Harrison, Distinguished Faculty Scholar

Wednesday, October 23, 2024
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
CSU 201

  New parents are inundated with warnings about the fatal risks of “co-sleeping,” or sharing a bed with a newborn. Unsurprisingly, messages about infant sleep safety impact parents differently based on their social location, including their gender, race, and class. Infant sleep safety is treated as the responsibility of individual families, yet the state is also taking an increasingly visible role in policing and surveilling parental decision making, including criminalizing the parents of children who die in their sleep. This talk will explain infant sleep safety debates, and analyze cases in which caretakers were prosecuted for sleep-related infant deaths. We will uncover which parents are viewed as perpetrators when tragedy strikes, and question how public health may be weaponized by the criminal justice system.

Registration is not required; for questions, contact CESR Director, Aaron Hoy, at aaron.hoy@mnsu.edu.