Whether Lindsay Clancy eventually goes to prison or not doesn’t really matter. I’m not even sure she cares that much. Her life is over.

But, as usual, society has split our opinions on this tragedy, even assigning partisanship and political ideology to the guilty or the innocent. That is a mistake. And we’re missing the point.

On the surface, this tragedy makes no sense: a loving mother commits the most heinous of acts, killing her three children. Shame on us if we don’t go very deep to ask why. Arguing about the legal standard of not guilty by insanity may be a conversation worth having, but it has nothing to do with Clancy’s former trial; it’s the law.

But the prosecution’s attempt during the trial to articulate an alternative motive to mental illness was done so clumsily and frankly offensively; it has infuriated women.

The case came down to something simple: that a high-functioning, competent woman could not also be suffering to the extent that she broke in this terrifying way.

Women in their 30s and 40s are caught between two eras. Opportunities and what we are allowed to do have steadily increased over our lifetimes, but men’s roles have shifted more gradually. Changes to men’s default status at work and at home have come through small adjustments, with career as the primary focus remaining intact.

The massive pile of life left over in a household with two career parents, multiple kids and the requirements of modern living is often shouldered by women.

Men in this demographic have intuited that they need to support their partners differently than their fathers did in the ’70s and ’80s. But for women, nothing has jolted the system into an adequate awakening and awareness of how much we own.

The physical lift and sacrifice that come with carrying, delivering, and nursing children are often treated as an afterthought. This, paired with a gigantic “mental load,” has created a phenomenon that is making women tired, sick and sad. A woman can hardly recognize herself as anything but a vessel for meeting emergent needs for years of her life, maybe decades.

And when it falls apart, and in Clancy’s case, in the most disastrous way, the question “what happened?” is worth asking.

Every bit of evidence shows that Clancy’s children were her entire life, purpose, and priority until hours before she took their lives and attempted to take her own.

We saw 1960’s misogyny on display by the prosecution: Countless references to the fact that Clancy checked out of inpatient care to attend her daughter’s birthday, endless video of Lindsay playing with her children in a pool, sharing her meticulous notes about her daughter’s bowel issues and son’s rash.

The prosecution attempted to use Clancy’s devotion to her children to argue that her proximate competence as a mother made this tragedy obviously avoidable and therefore proved intent.

Trust me on this. The pool, the birthday and the pediatrician’s office actually showed us a woman who, despite extraordinary suffering, still wanted to protect her children.

A suffering mother knows that her absence will create more suffering. There’s no easy way out of severe mental health problems — caring full-time for three kids is nearly an impossible environment for healing.

And in this and many other cases, no one is there to take over. Women are often the bellwether for our children’s heartbreak and happiness, and we know it. So we keep going.

We implement systems to manage these insane expectations: lists, routines, and attempts to delegate to and engage our partners and helpers. And then we are called controlling.

From permission slips to party invitations, notes in lunchboxes and Christmas gifts for teachers, women in their 30s to 50s are too often the CEOs, foremen and laborers of the job of creating domestic magic. Stability and adventure. Routine and celebration.

We don’t feel obligated, but we want to do “too much” because we believe the people we love deserve our best. They deserve it all.

Men are not the problem, at least not always. They are a product of a culture that often thinks it’s more evolved than it is, and where people struggling rarely have a chance to raise their hands and say, “It’s not as OK as you think, and I need help.”

Honest conversations about our assumed roles and whether they are working are everyone’s responsibility, and men need to own that.

This tragedy showed us exactly how high the stakes are.

Lindsay Case Palsrok of East Lansing is a public affairs professional, former lobbyist and mom.

This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Lindsay Clancy case exposes a crisis for mothers | Opinion

Reporting by Lindsay Case Palsrok / The Detroit News

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