AIBU to think that actually, yes parents can be partly held responsible for this?

[realitygone]

There has been a very sad murder in the city I live in, the person murdered was very young and was brutally beaten and murdered by people who are much younger (teens) I grew up in the area and it has actually made me feel quite sick about what the world is coming to

I posted a link to the story and a tribute to the person on my Facebook page, with a comment that something needs to be done about this yob culture we seem to be living in. My friend replied that she knew the person and the families of the murderers and that the families were awful in the area, I replied saying that the parents need to have some responsibility for their children who have murdered someone as something has gone seriously wrong with their upbringing.

Well, someone I know from school commented saying parents can't be responsible as some kids just go off the rails and they have no control over them.

It started to decend into a bit of a back and forth where she believed she was 100% right in what she was saying, and also commented that the murderers families probably feel just as devastated as the victims family, I deleted the whole post when she put this as its a bit of an insult to compare the two.

so aibu to think she is wrong, parents do have responsibility for their children and their upbringing?

YABU. You sound very naive and insensitive. Parenting isn't as clear cut as that. I hope none of your children go off the rails and people judge you as a person.

I believe in nature more than nurture (no shit Sherlock!).

I think I know where you are talking about, it's not that far from me. It was quite shocking how the person was murdered and the ages of the people who did it.

DS2 is a similar age and was really shocked, but we live 20 minutes away, in a 'nicer area', better schools, less opportunities for underage drinking and less drugs.

There are a lot of outside factors to be taken in to account. Maybe the parents could have been better, who knows, but in the main most parents of teens are tearing their hair out when they start going off the rails. You can not force them to school or college, you can't keep them at home. It's just too simplistic to put it all at the door of the parents, I am afraid.

Yes, what is 'yob culture'?

It is too simplistic to say well it's the parents fault.
You don't know what the parents have been doing to try and control their teens. You don't know how many hours they have spent pleading, begging, crying for help and support when things have gotten bad only to be turned away.

You don't know the crap they have been through, the judgements from the professionals when they have asked for help. The nasty comments from the professionals. You don't know how long they have tried and in the end to save their own sanity given up asking for the help. The help that won't come because their child has not at this point committed a crime.

You say the parents should do more.. What?
Lock them in their rooms? A determined teen will fuck off out of the window, and because of fire regs they need an escape route.
You ground them. They go out.
You manage to get them into school/college by almost dragging them. As soon as your back is turned off they go.. Or by some miracle they remain on site they have gone before you collect them.
You say ok well don't give them money so they cannot buy booze/drugs.. They turn to crime to get money. Petty shop lifting. Sell their stuff. Have mates who will buy stuff for them, to be repaid at a later date.

Nothing has seriously gone wrong with their childhood. Look at some of the serial killers over the decades. Nice, polite, well educated, rounded, good backgrounds. Yet this never stopped them from committing some atrocious acts of barbarity.

Yet you have children who have been the victims themselves of some of the worst type of abuse that you can never imagine. Throughout all their childhood, into their teens until either their abuser died or the victim left home. By your logic, because of their lack of upbringing, they should be the ones doing the crime. But they are not.

I live in Liverpool, I've lived in Norris Green (where Rhys Jones was shot), "Yob Culture" exists, to deny it is what caused the problems with "The Strand Crew" (one of the Noggsy Gangs).

We've had young men/teens beaten to death, stabbed and shot, as well as axe injuries, sometimes because a lad not from the area is on his own.

Tuebrook in Liverpool was extremely violent a few years ago, all involving under 20's.

I could name areas and times. We have temporary Police Stations and Matrix Vans being set up nightly.

Communities have worked hard to minimise this behaviour, if it doesn't exist in your area, good for you.

Having said that many of the lads where I live don't stand a chance. I know many young men carrying out life sentences who are as much victims as the dead.

""One of the things that is striking if you read in depth books about serial killers, is that most of them, had pretty ordinary childhoods.""

Who? The ones I've read about haven't.

Bloody, by Teen years it is to late, there are to many out of control under 10's, who are badly parented by those that used to indulge in animal behaviour themselves, but there isn't really an answer.

My aunt killed her first born DS, and my grandmother debeloped a mental health issue over it. Refused to leave the house because she was sure people were judging her.

Sometimes children make choices they know there parents wouldn't agree with. It isn't the parents fault,

I don't think serial killers are relevent to this. I think there's a special combination of factors and brain chemistry that make a serial killer.

Yobbish behaviour on the other hand seems to come from a few places, and I think more of it is peer based then parental influence. Kids egging kids on to act harder, be more violent.

There's definitely a culture of it in some communities, mine included. Recently when a young lad (about 8) repeatedly punched my dd in the head, I went up to see his mother. His brother (maybe 13) offered to come round and slit my throat for me, in front of his mother. I don't know how she parents her boys, whether she's the type who was horrified at her sons' behaviour or if violence is the go-to at their house. I doubt the lad will turn into a serial killer, but I wouldn't be surprised if either of them appeared in the court file for assault in the coming years.

I guess some parents are the cause, and others are desperately trying to sort out their children. Too many variables to generalise.

There are plenty of people brought up in terrible families who never murder or are violent to anyone

Wish I'd thought to write that. An excellent point. It works both ways.

Yob culture, is quite a problem over these ways. There are many examples of it..

this particular story involves a group of teenagers (young) intentionally setting out to jump & murder this person.

There was a man who every night outside his house were a group of teens causing disturbances, damaging property he went out to ask them to move on..they kicked him to death.

A group of teens knocked an elderly man unconscious and stole £5 off of him.

This is yob culture, and the police are doing nothing to help.

It is not black and white no, but parents do have the responsibility for their children you can be sent to prison if your child doesn't attend education, even if the child rebels the parent faces the consequences.

Society has not helped this new era, the needing to be richest, hardest and the one with the most scars seems to be the competition.

At 15 I think I was still playing hairdressers, not murdering someone.

How so lady ?

Also worth bearing in mind that damaging things can happen to kids that are genuinely completely out of their parents' control. KIds from decent and loving homes get bullied or sexually abused too, and with the best will in the world there's not always anything the parents can do to stop their child going off the rails after suffering stuff like that.

YABVU. But, unfortunately, the majority assume it must be the mother's parents fault. Inherent in this is the belief that parents have the power to create our childrens' lives - we do not, we lay the groundwork, see to the essentials, but the end result is not up to us. Our children are individuals who make their own choices, they aren't an extension of us. We don't have the power to create their lives and it is arrogant to think we do. Some parents don't 'see to the essentials' but the majority do, or do the very best they can, and are usually extremely conscientious about it. But I doubt you need to beat these parents with judgement and censure, they'll be doing that for themselves (in spades).

You can see I said that parents are not entirely to blame don't you?

Maybe it's my own upbringing and the belief's that I have that give me my opinions. Of which that is all they are, just as everyone else is entitled to one so am I.

I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer. There are general trends and there are also cases that don't fit any of them.

In many cases we see that violent criminals all too often had traumatic/abusive/unstable childhoods and have simply repeated the pattern themselves.

Sometimes an individual can experience a trauma that has nothing to do with that individual's immediate family, and yet the consequences can be so profound that the family are powerless to prevent the fallout.

Other times, a good child from a good family can simply fall in with the wrong crowd, and despite that family's best efforts be beyond control.

Since most of it goes on behind closed doors, it is simply impossible to comment on any particular family unless you are so involved you know the whole story.

I think it's a unique combination of genes and upbringing.

So I'm on the fence. But I would blame myself if my child did this. I would think I should have recognised the signs.

Not sure Facebook is the right place for a debate though.

YANBU to think that some of these children may have been failed by their parents and that their acts are partly their parents fault but YABU to say all are.

There was a boy I knew as a teenager who came from a very loving family, parents were quite strict but really nice, he went to a good school and generally had a good childhood. As an older teen he committed quite a horrific murder, there was no warning, no reason for anyone to think he wasn't the lovely lad we all thought he was, the night before the murder he had been at my friend (his gf's) house having dinner with her parents. It turned out in court he had been planning the murder for days. His parents and his gf parents were both devastated they hadn't seen something was wrong or done anything to stop it.

There's a parliamentary thingummy going on at the moment about cahms. It's acknowledged now at the highest level that services for children in the UK leave something to be desired.

There are very serious delays in accessing and getting genuinely effective, sometimes long term help and support for families, even when they are in crisis and screaming for help with their kids. Not every child is born perfect, some have quite serious hidden neurological deficits, disorders, or personality defects right from the off, others can develop them as a result of neglect or trauma. In both cases this country falls short on support.

We are good at sending parents on generic one size fits all parenting courses, but specialist training for professionals and parents is incredibly hard to source when it comes to more advanced requirements. It's no good telling the parent of a child with a personality disorder that there is one course every two years on the other side of the UK, when the next one is scheduled to run in 18 months time, and they have already had to hide all the sharp objects in the house!

If we could say that yes, every parent, (or school!) who asks for help with behavioral challenges in their children was getting that help in a prompt and timely manner - then we could jump to criticise every single time. However a quick glance through the teens section of this site (mostly "naice" parents) shows how difficult it can be to access help, even for the most educated and "pushy" of parents sometimes. Psychopathy to name just one condition is NOT dependent on socio-economic class - parents with fewer resources are unable to access the private sector though if it impacts their family.

Teen control is not easy, even with grammar school types, and the influences even those children from good homes are exposed to, can be shocking nowadays to those of us raised in gentler, times and places. We need to stop with the easy finger pointing and get down to the hard graft in helping these kids as a society.

We know that violence and sexual offences are on the rise in ever younger kids each year, yet we are in the process of cutting the specialised units, school places and services that can actually tackle these issues before a tragedy occurs. The area in question is one with particularly poor services in comparison to other areas, even by the already low bar set by society.

We either make a collective effort to prioritise cahms, SN education and family support services or we accept that incidences like this will occur with increasing frequency. That's not the current "blame the parent & forget about it" meme I know, but it's the only sensible choice. Pointy fingers and sucky lemon faces isn't working, and all our young people are left at increased risk as a result.

It isn't a cop out when you see the children never going to school, watching their parents carry out their drink and drug habits, handle stolen goods etc.

My immediate area is getting slightly better, because so many of the lads are either dead, or in prison, or under the threat of death. At the end of my road there is a temporary Police Station, complete with cameras from 6-9pm to protect the Tesco Express. The security guards cannot handle the kids aged between 10-15. The parents if these kids who are causing trouble do nothing. Any night if the week you will see the younger siblings of these kids 6-10 out at all hours of the night, doing the dirty work (vandalism) of their older peers.

There are pockets of "Yob Culture".

Writing this has just made me realise that it's actually getting better because we have permanent police presence.

If you are not experiencing it, you probably cannot comprehend it.