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Baring truth about killer parents, a new study in U.S. is providing the first comprehensive statistical overview of the tragic phenomenon. According to the study, in the past three decades American parents have killed their own child about 3,000 time every year. 

Findings of the new study is based on the comprehensive statistical analysis of the filicide in the US which draws on 32 years of data involving more than 94,000 arrests. Researchers have also considered the database of FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports.

In the total arrests between 1976 and 2007 (632,017 arrests) they found that that 14.9 percent of them (94,146 cases) were because of filicides. 

The report also found that Male children were more likely to be killed compared to female children. Nearly 11 percent of victims of filicide were stepchildren. 

Among offenders, while fathers were about equally likely to kill an infant, they were more likely to be the alleged murderer of children older than a year, especially when the children were adults (fathers were the offenders in 78.3% of those cases), reported TOI.

Around 57 percent of the time, fathers were accused murderer. Research also dug deep into the common filicide scenarios where they find that chances of father killing a son was 29.5 percent whereas a mother killing a son was little more than 22 percent. 

According to the study, a mother was slightly more likely to kill a daughter (19.7 percent) compared to a father whose chances were calculated to be around 18 percent.

Mentioning of the method of the killing, study mentioned that the most common was "personal weapons" such as by beating, choking, or drowning of victims. Parents also used "personal weapons" in 69 percent of murder of infants. 

In case of adults, parents used firearms more common (in around 72 percent of the cases). 

The paper is published in the March edition of the journal Forensic Science International.