A New York psychotherapist is witnessing an unusual trend among his male patients: they’re using the Lindsay Clancy case to screen potential wives.
Lindsay Clancy is the Massachusetts mother who was convicted of ending the lives of her three young children. Now, according to therapist Jonathan Alpert, men are asking women what they think about her case — not out of casual curiosity, but as a compatibility test before marriage.
Alpert first noticed the pattern when one patient described his new screening question. It wasn’t about politics, religion, or whether she wanted children. He wanted to know her reaction to Clancy.
Then more men in Alpert’s practice started bringing up the same case. A conviction had somehow become a dating filter.
“The question isn’t really about Lindsay Clancy. It’s much more personal: What does your answer tell me about what it would be like to build a life with you?”
The test cuts both ways — and reveals starkly different fears.
Some men hear sympathy for Clancy and interpret it as excuse-making. When a woman says “that could have been me,” they may not hear compassion for severe mental illness. They hear someone identifying with a mother who took three children’s lives.
The questions spiral: Does mental illness erase responsibility? Where does empathy end and excuse-making begin? If we had children together, would I trust this person with them?
Women, Alpert notes, often hear something entirely different when a man reacts to Clancy with nothing but anger. He may think he’s expressing horror at three children’s deaths. She may wonder what his reaction says about how he’d treat her.
If I became seriously ill after childbirth, would he understand what was happening? Would he help me or simply blame me?
For some men, the Clancy case raises a frightening question about marriage: Can I trust you with our children? For some women, it raises another: Can I trust you if something happens to me?
Alpert argues the real problem is thinking one opinion can answer either question.
We’re doing this more and more in dating, he writes. How did you vote? What do you think about Israel? Transgender athletes? Therapy? We don’t just listen to the answer. We use it to decide whether someone is compassionate, trustworthy, stable, selfish, or safe to build a life with.
Now we’re doing it with court cases.
Alpert understands the temptation. Dating requires making enormous decisions with painfully incomplete information. You don’t know how someone will behave after 10 years of marriage, during a financial crisis, after the birth of a child, or when one of you becomes seriously ill.
So people look for clues. A question about Lindsay Clancy becomes a way of trying to learn something that can’t really be known yet.
But people don’t sort that neatly, Alpert warns. Someone can believe Clancy was profoundly ill and still believe protecting children comes first. Someone can focus on the children without being indifferent to severe postpartum mental illness. Someone can believe a parent should be held legally responsible and still feel tremendous compassion for her psychiatric suffering.
The trouble starts when an opinion becomes a verdict on the person holding it.
“You sympathize with Lindsay Clancy” becomes “I can’t trust you with our children.” “You don’t sympathize with her” becomes “You wouldn’t protect me if I became mentally ill.”
Alpert sees smaller versions of this pattern in his therapy practice constantly. “You don’t understand why I’m upset” becomes “You don’t care about me.” “You spend too much money” becomes “You’re irresponsible.” One piece of information becomes an explanation for the whole person.
You can find someone who agrees with you about politics, COVID-19, Israel, and Lindsay Clancy, Alpert writes. That doesn’t tell you how either of you will behave when life becomes difficult.
The Clancy question may be useful, but not for the reason people think.
The important part is what happens when a couple disagrees. Can you hear an opinion you dislike without deciding it tells you everything about the other person? Can you ask why someone sees the case differently before deciding what that difference means?
The person who gives you the “right” answer today will eventually give you one you don’t like, Alpert concludes. How the two of you handle that moment may tell you far more about your future together than anything either of you said about Lindsay Clancy.
Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, D.C., and author of the book “Therapy Nation.”
