Why are parents murdering their kids?

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Parents are murdering their kids and it isn't getting the attention that it should.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/23/children.dead.ap/index.html
Jim Junior Nice, 33, was charged Thursday with three counts of first-degree murder. Fatally poisoned were 6-year-old twins, Justin and Spencer, and a 2-year-old girl, Raquel Anna.
Divorce records show Jim and Leslie Nice lost custody of the children after the 2004 drowning death of a fourth child, 22-month-old Ian Nice, in a ditch at a local park.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/content.cfm?content_type=article&content_type_id=7612
Associated ContentSearch Content
· In 1999 351 kids under 5 were killed by a parent!
· this is a more prevalent problem than people think.
· It happens in families where there's no history of violence.

A father of 4 killed his kids and himself by driving over the edge of a cliff, and a father is charged because he killed his 6 kids and set the house on fire. All this happened in March 2002.
June, 2004 In Warsaw, Poland --A husband and wife murdered their four children, whose mummified bodies were found in barrels at their family's apartment.
June, 2003 a young couple in Texas strangled and then decapitated their three young children. Children under the age of 5 in the United States are more likely to be killed by their parents than by anyone else. FBI crime stats show that in 1999 parents were responsible for 57% of these murders. Even though women commit less than 13% of all violent crime, they are responsible for about 50% of all parental murders.
Susan Smith was sentenced to life in prison for strapping her two toddler sons into her car, then pushing it into a South Carolina lake. For nine days, Smith maintained a web of deceit wherein she made a nationally televised plea for the return of her children, after claiming they'd been taken by a black carjacker. It was finally found out Smith had drowned the boys after her new lover said they had no future together because he didn't want children.
As a mother of 3 children I just don't understand how this happens. Any thoughts, suggested research material? comments?

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From a sufficiently twisted and disturbed mind, children may not appear the way they do to you.

Suddenly, you or your wife is pregnant. Perhaps it was an accident or you never thought through its implications. Now you have a screaming, biting, clawing monster demanding attention every moment of every day. You can't sleep, you have had to abandon all your friends and things you like to do, you watch your bank account dwindle, and you are damn near a nervous breakdown. And now another one shows up. It feels like they are eating you alive.

But it could all go away so easily. You could get your old life back, start doing things that are fun, live a moment of your life free of fear or pain or stress. All it takes is the cold edge of one knife or a minute or so under water or an overdose of medication. It would be over in no time.

And thats only one shattered perspective. There are many that lead down the same road.

 

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Kids are annoying, loud, hyperactive, screeching little bastards. Kids piss me off.

 

I agree with Happy...

 

This is America for you. 315 cases of infanticide in a year in a country of 300 million and we are told that "something has to be done." When it's a 2 in a million happening, how do we find out who to threaten? Do we do what we usually do, and blind ourselves to the consequences of our own actions? Then do we find license to make a lot of people miserable in order to accomplish our goals and find ourselves sanctioned by God in anything that we do? If whatever we do causes more children to die, do we know? Do we just assign more blame? Assigning blame is a really easy way to make ourselves believe that we are doing something about a problem, and we actually are. Does it even matter that we're just making it worse by doing something about it?

Do we even recognize the fact that there have been social reformers at this problem for more than a century now? Are we sure that we are seeing their successes or their failures? Are we sure what, to them, constitutes a success or a failure? My modern school with its modern methods nearly drove me to suicide. Instead I died inside. What they did to me directly adversely affected my life, and it was the product of social reform efforts.

 

In a society where sex is praised above any other concern, the unwanted results of sex (pregnancy) are looked down on, accepted as a necessary evil.
I can understand that at least some parents kill their children for this reason. They only wanted to have sex, but didn't want to deal with the possible negative consequences of sex. Since no contraceptive is 100% safe (even so-called "sterilization" can fail), one will sooner or later be facing an unwanted pregnancy. For such a case, many people have the "I'll bite the bullet and keep the child" attitude, and that can't be a good attitude for raising children.


Another reason for killing children, I think, is definitely unrealistic expectations -- that children should be exactly the way parents want them to be.

 

IMO, as a mother of three (really 5), my children drive me insane 75% of the time. If it's not one child needing my attention then it's the other needing something else. But MURDERING a child for any of the reasons you guys have given or anything else not spoken of as of yet still seems unimaginable to me! There must be previous warning signs that show these peoples "behaviorial problems" in advance of having kids.

 

ReignStorm: That is because you are being driven by about a billion years of biological imperatives designed to make sure your genes are passed on. Endorphins and horomones and whatnot. For some people, for whatever reason, some of these biological cues just don't take hold.

Its not unheard of in animals either. A mother will sometimes eat her babies.

Water: Sex is a rare pleasantry and break from reality in an otherwise mundane and soul crushing world. For a single moment a man and a woman seem to ascend to heaven and time just seems to stop. All thoughts, all worries, everything is ripped aside like tissue paper. Are you telling me that this isn't all its cracked up to be?

 

In rural Africa, unwanted children (who are often late abortions done by witchdoctors and medicine women) are left in the wild for animals or put in black bags and dumped in the garbage. The underlying problem, as I understand it, is a low regard for children as people. They can only be a useful possession (if the parents can afford to raise them and send them off to supplement their income), or a burden. This is the same attitude that makes child abuse and child rape common (physical murder isn't the only - or the worst - form of contempt.) Science can't tell them it's wrong or morally reprehensible (in the wild, animals frequently abandon their offspring if they can't or won't care for them - see Clockwood's comment), the law usually has the same attitude as the society it governs (thanks to democracy), and other forms of moral responsibilty (religious and humanitarian) have their hands full just tending to the victims. Fortunately, while there are people who would reject unwanted and unplanned children, there are also those who love them (and not out of necessity or guilt, either). All children come unexpected, in the sense that no couple knows when to expect a child until it actually shows up - planning or no planning - and certainly not all parents experience this as an unpleasant surprise.

What determines whether such a surprise is in fact negative, lies much deeper than mere arguments about contraception or abstinence - it lies with the potential parents' attitude towards any children that might come out of their union, which is culturally and morally determined. A culture's attitude towards human beings - of any age - depends on its internal moral framework, on what they believe it is that gives a human being any value. If it's purely economic, children will come last (or end up as part of the work-force). If it's self-preservation, children come last; if it's survival of the fittest, pleasure, desire, or any form of self-gratification, children come last. Only if social responsiblity and individual conscience is governed by principles of love, do children (and elderly) have any chance of receiving an equal and inalienable place in their society. That's why most abandoned or aborted children are the result of couples who never imagined themselves as potential parents first - casual relationships and casual sex, where love is just a fleeting emotion, if present at all.

In the Judeo-Christian paradigm (I can't speak for other traditions), the institution of marriage is supposed to imply potential (if not actual) parenthood and thus entering it - regarded by the community as a legally binding procedure - was an unborn child's "insurance policy" against a loveless (and, God forbid, non-) existence. Not to mention the security of both partners. In its religious context, love could mean nothing less than commitment and fidelity - never emotionality or selfishness - and sex was only proper inside its protective walls. There's no need to mention that this paradigm has been eroded somewhat (not least by those who say they believe in it).

I think as people who grew up in a culture where love has historically had a transcendent value, we often underestimate how much we have benefited from such moral and social legacy. Without its foundations, other principles may easily outweigh the values we take for granted - and when those foundations are eroded, we will see its effects as surely as in the people and cultures where it never took root.

 

Are humans murdering or otherwise harming their children now moreso than 200 years ago? Or 500 years ago? I'd be willing to bet that the RATE of such crimes is about the same, we just know more about the incidents now than before. NBC News and the Internet hadn't been created back then, ya' know? (Or did cavemen enjoy the Internet???)

Baron Max

 

The thing is that this kind of reasoning is sometimes used to justify abortion and infanticide. Like, "Because gorillas kill their newborns, you can do it too."

An acquaintance of mine once actually counselled me this way. She didn't actually say "Because gorillas kill their newborns, you can do it too," but she did say that abortion (induced miscarriage) and infanticide are natural (and listed examples), therefore, there is no problem if I do it too. Basically, that I should plan on this course of action, and find my peace of mind in it, and that sex is more important than any other consideration.

So we are conditioned to think of sex, yes. A romantic, idealistic idea of sex it is.

Saying this very loud "yes" very quietly: yes.



* * *

I don't think this is rationally possible -- to love an unwanted child. If it is unwanted, then it is unwanted.

I know some people who are the results of failed contraceptives, people who live even though their parents have not planned them. And they mention it, casually. It is surreal -- I had a classmate whose mother didn't plan her. One day, we were standing in the line for lunch, chit-chatting, and she just casually mentioned how she is an unplanned child.
Then I have a classmate whose pill failed, but she decided to keep the baby. And it seems as this "This child is not wanted" is written all over that family. They spoil it, yet sooner or later they say how they didn't plan it.

And those children pick this up, identify with it. It must be awful to grow up like this. I wonder whether there is a connection between being an unwated child, and then killing one's own children.

If one meddles with this uncertainty, trying to make it turn a certain way by using contraceptives, then you are suggesting mental acrobatics.

If a person uses contraceptives, they use them with the intention not to conceive, they use them because they do NOT want to have children.

How can a child become wanted simply because it happens to be there??

I agree. But if the man's desire to have sex is viewed as a NEED, and the women conditioned to comply with this perceived need, then sex becomes valued above any other concern. Namely, women naturally have the tendency to be more careful about their sexuality, as they know they will bear all the consequences. But if women are educated to not care about whether they conceive or not, then they will want sex as much as men do.


How many men do you know who are willing to abstain from sex when they cannot afford or don't want to have children? I know none. They will simply only choose women who will have sex with them, and who will not care whether they conceive or not -- and this is the preferred ideal of a woman.

That such a woman won't make a good mother in case she becomes one, is predictable.

And yet this very paradigm dictates sex for pleasure. "No sex, no love," it says. And if the couple doesn't want to have children or cannot afford them -- then it is simply the woman's problem to deal with it, however well she can. Because if she doesn't have sex with her husband, then he will be unhappy and think she doesn't love him.
Of course, Christians won't say this in such blunt terms as I do now, they say it, only more politely, more secretively.

 

Probably not. But I think our morality spread along with our awareness.

 

Water,

Where do adoptive and foster parents fit into your argument? And is the lack of love, immoral behaviour and abuse confined to the male gender?

 

I didn't address them. I am only referring to people who have children despite not wanting to have them.

I do not see how I have implied that.
I even think that a mother is more likely to kill her child -- as compared to the father killing his child.

 

No...that's not it!?

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Reignstorm, as someone who has children, do you share water's view that unplanned equals unwanted?

 

water, what was Christ's position towards 'sex for pleasure' and lust?

 

No..... I do not agree at all that unplanned equals unwanted. All of my children, sadly to say, were unplanned. I didn't even want children! I do, however, enjoy the pleasures of a bedroom with the opposite sex

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, but none of my children remained unwanted once conception was realized. I wouldn't have had my life any other way, now! The catch phrase, "you sleep in the bed you made!", Is something that was/is very important to me. If you do something with your eyes WIDE OPEN then
you should be able to live (happily :bugeye: ) with the consequences of your actions. By the way, all of my children know that they were unplanned. Depending on how you explain to children how things happen in that situation, kids usually understand it better and are just happy to be here. It is also a good tool when teaching kids about unsafe sex!

 

has anyone ever looked at the simerlarity between this and what happens in the natural world? (ie everything BUT us)

Mother cats will often reprosses there first litters and specise like fish and frogs will eat there own young if they can. Then in humans you have PNSD and other things that result in the parents killing there kids. Wouldnt the first step be to look around and see that this happens all around us and that we are just following the chemicals in our brains and THEN maybe once sociaty can understand it we can work out how to deal with it