TW To notice that a lot of child murders have one thing in common

Can you provide a link to the statistics evidencing your 90% - 95% assertion? Genuinely interested

The biggest factor in child abuse is that there is a step parent in the picture.
It's like 90-95%.

It's fucking harrowing and whilst I married a man who wasn't my eldest child's father, and he was really lovely to her, now that marriage is over, I absolutely will not be having a new partner to have around my younger two.

As I've aged I have become far less naive I guess.

While I realise that there are huge amounts of competing issues for public funds, I wish as a society we could focus more on the financially vulnerable position single mums are in and pour more money into rent assistance so they don’t need to shack up with an unrelated male to pay the bills.

Financial pressure is usually the primary reason mothers move in with unrelated males so quickly and we don’t talk about this as much as we should.

I've seen stats about the high risk to girls of living with an unrelated male but didn't realise it was statistically proved about kids coming to other types of harm.

As usual, this comes down to relative and absolute risk. The relative risk posed by a step-parent, new live-in partner, etc, might well be higher than that of the natural parent. But the absolute risk posed by either is still tiny.

Put another way: If a child is murdered, there's probably a higher chance that it was the step-parent (etc) who did it than the natural parent. But very few children are murdered at all in the UK. In fact the amount of national coverage that almost every case gets is testament to that. Yes, of course every murder of a child is one too many. But preventing all of them would require taking 80% of children away from their mothers "just in case", because we're not very good at predicting who will murder their child.

Why does this matter? Because as a society we have decided that attempting to deal with relative risks is a slippery slope that leads to discrimination.

If you look at the statistics for any rare crime, and divide the population up into small enough chunks, you can guarantee that you will find that some ethnic or social group commits more of that particular crime (relative risk). But that doesn't mean that even people from that group are actually especially likely to commit that crime (absolute risk) - it just means that they are a bit more likely to be the perpetrators if the crime is committed. Posh white men are more likely to commit fraud in the City, but most posh white men don't commit fraud, and it would be unfair for the police to pick up the first posh white man they come across when they hear of a case of fraud.

So the police and politicians have decided to concentrate on absolute risk, which avoids all the awkwardness of profiling. Hence why we hear things like "Crime is down 8% year-on-year", which is great if you were not a victim of crime this year, but doesn't help much if you were.

The OP may very will be right, that a disproportionate amount of the violence against kids is being perpetrated by step-parents (etc). But that doesn't tell us anything about whether we can do anything to fix the problem by somehow targeting men who start relationships with single mothers. The vast majority of those men will not harm their new step-kids; there are probably people reading this post who are in that position and know that their new partner is not a threat. What we can do is try to make people generally more aware of the warning signs of a bad partner, through education. But with 70 million people, occasionally some bad things are going to happen, and to some extent that's the price of living in a free society where we don't point the finger of suspicion at someone based on their circumstances or demographics.

So in 56% of solved child murder cases it was a step parent/new partner.
That's mental - it looks like c. 12% kids are raised in step families and c. 25% kids are raised in single parent families, with c. 62% in married/cohabiting families.
The data is really unclearly labelled though and it doesn't specify biological parents so this could be all wrong.
Anyway there's millions of step families or single parent families all with new partner potential at any point - it's for both parents to manage the risk of who is spending time with their kids.
Sara Sharif case was unusual in that her biological father did it, although I guess he was a nutcase and sadly so was her mum so neither were properly bonded and protective of her. So awful when she sounded such a sweet mother hen to the smaller children at her school too.
But biological fathers often lose touch with kids after splitting up and so many don't pay CM for them which leaves single mothers financially struggling (not to mention MH given the pressure raising kids alone) and more open to new partners who can help with bills.
Back to the single mom family resorts! Add counsellors, fully vetted babysitters, a nursery, after school clubs, music and sports, a spa....

In a way the "evil stepmother" trope is almost trolling the reality. Because it's not often women or step mothers. It's step men. But there aren't many pop culture references to the evil step dad. Whereas the evil stepmother is a trope.

Recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding Child Homocide.
Key Statistics:

• Total homicides: Between April 2022 and May 2023, 48 children under 16 in England and Wales were victims of homicide. This is slightly lower than the average of 52 homicides over the previous ten years.

Perpetrators:

• Parent or step-parent: 17
• Other family, friend, or acquaintance: 9
• Stranger: 4 (One victim was Lilia Valutyte, 9 years old, killed in Lincolnshire by a 22-year-old man with schizophrenia.)
• No suspect charged (as of March 30, 2023): 18 cases (will decrease over time as charges are brought)

Gender:

• Male: 29
• Female: 19

Age:

• Under 1 year old: 17
• 1 - 4 years old: 11
• 5 - 15 years old: 20

Recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding Child Homocide.
Key Statistics:

• Total homicides: Between April 2022 and May 2023, 48 children under 16 in England and Wales were victims of homicide. This is slightly lower than the average of 52 homicides over the previous ten years.

Perpetrators:

• Parent or step-parent: 17
• Other family, friend, or acquaintance: 9
• Stranger: 4 (One victim was Lilia Valutyte, 9 years old, killed in Lincolnshire by a 22-year-old man with schizophrenia.)
• No suspect charged (as of March 30, 2023): 18 cases (will decrease over time as charges are brought)

Gender:

• Male: 29
• Female: 19

Age:

• Under 1 year old: 17
• 1 - 4 years old: 11
• 5 - 15 years old: 20

As usual, this comes down to relative and absolute risk. The relative risk posed by a step-parent, new live-in partner, etc, might well be higher than that of the natural parent. But the absolute risk posed by either is still tiny.

Put another way: If a child is murdered, there's probably a higher chance that it was the step-parent (etc) who did it than the natural parent. But very few children are murdered at all in the UK. In fact the amount of national coverage that almost every case gets is testament to that. Yes, of course every murder of a child is one too many. But preventing all of them would require taking 80% of children away from their mothers "just in case", because we're not very good at predicting who will murder their child.

Why does this matter? Because as a society we have decided that attempting to deal with relative risks is a slippery slope that leads to discrimination.

If you look at the statistics for any rare crime, and divide the population up into small enough chunks, you can guarantee that you will find that some ethnic or social group commits more of that particular crime (relative risk). But that doesn't mean that even people from that group are actually especially likely to commit that crime (absolute risk) - it just means that they are a bit more likely to be the perpetrators if the crime is committed. Posh white men are more likely to commit fraud in the City, but most posh white men don't commit fraud, and it would be unfair for the police to pick up the first posh white man they come across when they hear of a case of fraud.

So the police and politicians have decided to concentrate on absolute risk, which avoids all the awkwardness of profiling. Hence why we hear things like "Crime is down 8% year-on-year", which is great if you were not a victim of crime this year, but doesn't help much if you were.

The OP may very will be right, that a disproportionate amount of the violence against kids is being perpetrated by step-parents (etc). But that doesn't tell us anything about whether we can do anything to fix the problem by somehow targeting men who start relationships with single mothers. The vast majority of those men will not harm their new step-kids; there are probably people reading this post who are in that position and know that their new partner is not a threat. What we can do is try to make people generally more aware of the warning signs of a bad partner, through education. But with 70 million people, occasionally some bad things are going to happen, and to some extent that's the price of living in a free society where we don't point the finger of suspicion at someone based on their circumstances or demographics.

Errr no they aren’t unless you go by self reporting figures. I do know that we very rarely if ever hear of women being killed by a female current or former partner whereas we constantly hear of men killing their partners (and almost never women killing men).

A man will see another man’s child as a biological threat to their status.

That's true. Social workers are woefully under-resourced. (I also from experience with a family member don't think they're always the best trained or most competent - probably goes back to the lack of resources and desperation for staff.) And to be clear I also don't think there's any need to investigate every single step family or anything like that. I don't believe most step families are a great set up for the kids involved but I don't think they're dangerous. But this link on all these child murder stories in the news is just so troubling. Don't you think as a society we could push a stronger message of 'focus on your kids, not on your next bf'? We have such a culture of 'you do you, live your life'. Even on here, which is not particularly step-parent friendly, you see people being encouraged to do what makes them happy rather than put the kids first.

If you're talking about Sara Sheriff then the other thing they have in common is that Family Court gave contact \custody to the abuser so went on to kill them.

But homeschool is being blamed because the Children's Commissioner for England has it in for SEND children and their families

In a way the "evil stepmother" trope is almost trolling the reality. Because it's not often women or step mothers. It's step men. But there aren't many pop culture references to the evil step dad. Whereas the evil stepmother is a trope.