Children no longer listen to their parents, and get murdered

[spartasman]

Lately, there have been several cases of parents killing their children, including this, and this one. The last of those is the more brutal one, and also the first that seems to have been reported lately.

Now, perhaps I simply haven't been paying enough attention to the news as I should, but this seems to be a sudden epidemic of parent-child murder (I'm sure there is a fancy word for that, but I can't think of it off the top of my head). Is this simply because the news caught on to these sorts of stories this month? Is it because of some inherent moral or sociological deficiency in parents today, or because kids these days have no respect?

[cosmicalstorm]

Fancy word is familicide. I've noticed a story like this every three months or so on news sites since I started going online in 1999 so I very much doubt it's a new phenomenon. Probably as old as modern society or maybe even humanity itself.

[General Zod]

Some statistics.

Grant Duwe, a Minnesota criminologist who has studied mass murders in the United States, said that even though familicides are infrequent, they are the most common kind of mass murder in the country. He defined a mass murder as four victims within a 24-hour period, and said that in 909 cases of mass murder that occurred in the United States between 1900 and 2000, more than half were perpetrated by and on immediate family members.

Duwe said familicides were most prevalent in rural areas during the Great Depression.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z1CpFX4TMH

Compared to other murders it just doesn't seem to be that common.

[Broomstick]

But they are linked to economic distress so there may have been a slight increase in frequency in recent years.

[spartasman]

Some statistics.

Grant Duwe, a Minnesota criminologist who has studied mass murders in the United States, said that even though familicides are infrequent, they are the most common kind of mass murder in the country. He defined a mass murder as four victims within a 24-hour period, and said that in 909 cases of mass murder that occurred in the United States between 1900 and 2000, more than half were perpetrated by and on immediate family members.

Duwe said familicides were most prevalent in rural areas during the Great Depression.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z1CpFX4TMH

Compared to other murders it just doesn't seem to be that common.

That evidence seems to point out only those cases in which the father kills his entire family due to financial hardship. What seems most disturbing about this string of recent familicide's (thanks for that) is that they are perpetrated by the mothers of these children, and because they "were disrespectful."

[General Zod]

That evidence seems to point out only those cases in which the father kills his entire family due to financial hardship. What seems most disturbing about this string of recent familicide's (thanks for that) is that they are perpetrated by the mothers of these children, and because they "were disrespectful."

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Without some more data you're just looking at a few outlier anomalies that the press likes to inflate.

[Mayabird]

Lately, there have been several cases of parents killing their children, including this, and this one. The last of those is the more brutal one, and also the first that seems to have been reported lately.

Those two are the SAME ARTICLE. How one instance counts as several cases I won't know.

And yes, it's far more common for the father to kill the entire family than for the mother to do it, though it's rather uncommon anyway. The media was big on that last year or the year before, going on about men who killed their kids and wife and burned their house down because they lost their job or something, then got bored and started talking about something else. Maybe that was when they had those guys who didn't stop at their families and went on a random killing spree until the cops took them down, but the media got bored of that too even though they were still going on.

[spartasman]

Those two are the SAME ARTICLE. How one instance counts as several cases I won't know.

Damn! That's the last time I use the Ctrl - V function. Here, this is the one I meant

[General Zod]

Besides, when you have incidents like this it's really hard to pinpoint the blame on any common cause or problem.

[Mayabird]

Alright. That's still only two cases, though. I'd want at least three instances before even starting to pretend to entertain notions of a pattern. Three hundred eight million people in the U.S. means highly statistically unlikely events can happen twice in this country in a short span.

[General Zod]

I'm pretty sure this incident was posted on the board before, but if anything it reinforces the notion that mothers do such things out of economic stress.

[Sela]

Nevertheless, it's good to see people finally living up to the high standards of biblical morality that Jesus pushes for in the *NEW* testament.

Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’

</sarcasm>

[General Zod]

Nevertheless, it's good to see people finally living up to the high standards of biblical morality that Jesus pushes for in the *NEW* testament.

Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’

</sarcasm>

What does religion have to do with anything? None of the articles posted mention a religious motivation being linked whatsoever.

[Duckie]

While this person didn't mention, nor this article, a lot of infanticides and child murders are done by highly religious mothers- either to make their child enter heaven and exit the world they have troubles with, or to specifically in the case of some of them, kill them before original sin kicks in at puberty. (The official position of many fundamentalist evangelicals is that children have automatically accepted jesus kinda sorta, even if not raised by christians, until about 12ish (which coincidentally is puberty, though they insist it's some nebulous concept called "The Age of Reason" which just coincidentally happens to be the time when kids start seriously exploring sex)).

Basically, the knowledge that the children, when dead, will go to an eternal paradise of joy helps override the counterimpulse to not murder your children even in financially or emotionally stressful moments. Hell, some of these mothers think they've done a praiseworthy thing, by damning themselves to save their children in the most literal of senses. Generally, perhaps ironically, those ones tend to get described as insane by the media compared to the more normal child murderers.

[General Zod]

While this person didn't mention, nor this article, a lot of infanticides and child murders are done by highly religious mothers- either to make their child enter heaven and exit the world they have troubles with, or to specifically in the case of some of them, kill them before original sin kicks in at puberty. (The official position of many fundamentalist evangelicals is that children have automatically accepted jesus kinda sorta, even if not raised by christians, until about 12ish (which coincidentally is puberty, though they insist it's some nebulous concept called "The Age of Reason" which just coincidentally happens to be the time when kids start seriously exploring sex)).

Basically, the knowledge that the children, when dead, will go to an eternal paradise of joy helps override the counterimpulse to not murder your children even in financially or emotionally stressful moments. Hell, some of these mothers think they've done a praiseworthy thing, by damning themselves to save their children in the most literal of senses. Generally, perhaps ironically, those ones tend to get described as insane by the media compared to the more normal child murderers.

True, but so far pretty much all of the examples have been driven by money. It just seems like a total non sequitur to bring it up. Especially when a good deal of them occurred in the Great Depression, where being highly religious was the norm.

[Duckie]

Well, I'm not saying it made sense to bring it up. It's certainly worth considering in other contexts, where it seems actually relevant.