Murderers' mothers are not to blame

[Zuyi]

"once again you have that highly enabling mother and a child whose behaviours were overlooked time and time and time again and the mother just continuously makes every effort to protect this child even after it's abundantly clear that they have done the worst thing imaginable. "

This is from the most recent episode of the podcast Redhanded where they talk about murderers.

I just find it enfuriating that they keep blaming mothers. Do they really think that a bit more discipline from mothers early on would have been enough to cure violent psychopaths? And what should the mothers have done exactly?

AIBU mothers are not responsible for their adult son's crimes because of being too indulgent.

Or are they, and I'm somehow missing the power of mothers?

That's not relevant to the particular case they were discussing though, the dad was on the scene

Being over protective and indulging every whim is actually a form of abuse and certainly not parenting.

YANBU

most murderers are men, so of course the true fault somewhere must be down to a woman.

of course a lot of criminals have bad upbringings and that is not their fault and not always down to a mother but how they manage that is their responsibility

Sure, but I didn’t know it was about a particular case as I’m not familiar with the podcast. Op only said later it was was about poor Gabby Petito.

Well, in my experience (20+ years working with offenders in prison and in the community), pretty much all the people I've ever worked with have experienced notable trauma, neglect or other abuses in childhood. Usually the trauma is inflicted by the parents or by someone else the parents haven't protected them from. So yes, mother's are a big contributing factor, as are the either violent or absent father's. As that child gets older and acts out/falls behind at school then school bullies and peers also contribute.

Sorry, but mum is almost always a factor - though usually so are a few others.

Of course it's the mothers fault, if you are a mysoginist, it's the first rule of misogyny

1. Women are responsible for what men do.

I notice this as well with terrorists. Women in the community the terrorist have come from are always asked what they could do to stop radicalisation. But not what the men could do

Really though is male violence, inability to deal with emotions as men and bad male role models/absent male role models as much as anything

How on earth do you know they were lovely? I'm pretty sure Harold Shipman seemed lovely to many. Noone ever knows what goes on behind closed doors! I worked with an offender once whose parents had treated him absolutely horrendously. They came to visit him in forensic psychiatric hospital and several staff said how lovely his parents were.

Quite a few offenders have been treated as 'the black sheep' of the family. Siblings can often be treated differently by parents. Sometimes one is sexually abused, the others not. Or one palmed off to abusing uncle etc..

You can not know the ins and outs of a family enough as a 'family friend' to make those assumptions.

My brother has severe and enduring schizophrenia. I know this is largely the result of his horrendous upbringing. I have a great job, married etc.. no MH probs. People I'm sure assume that because i turned out ok our lives must have been fine. But families are complex and each child also has v different protective factors, friends, teachers and others who may or may not protect against the horrors endured in childhood.

I just know that I would blame myself though. I feel mum guilt at the best of times, never mind if my child turned out to be a murderer!

Some are absolutely a product of a terrible childhood inflicted by the parent(s).

YABU

I haven't listened to the latest episode yet so haven't heard the context etc.. I'm a bit mixed on this, whilst mothers are far to quickly blamed, and fathers not mentioned being so infuriating, I have to agree with pps that childhood experiences and therefore mothers do hugely impact behaviour of a person in the future. It still doesn't mean a mother should be blamed though.
Redhanded has really gone downhill lately though, it's not as well researched as it was to begin with, some really silly remarks get made. I think a lot of their listeners are feeling the same.

Certainly parents who leave guns around their homes in the US are responsible when their children go and shoot their schoolmates and teachers. I think it depends on the situation.

Is that a verbatim quote though op?

I listened to the episode in question yesterday and the podcasters were rightly very critical of both parents' conduct, not just in relation to their child's upbringing (not much info in the public domain on that), but more in relation to their obstruction of a police investigation and cruelty to the victim's family. Their son killed the woman. Theu hired him a lawyer (ok, fine), but did that before her body was found, and refused to co-operate with police of their son's girlfriend's family. Their conduct was appalling.

or, that should read.

I recall thinking their final sentence was somewhat throwaway, but during the rest of the hour long episode they were very critical of both parents, and rightly so, in light of their conduct post Gabby's disappearance.

I do think PARENTS can have a very significant influence on how their children develop. Of course I do.

A young teen relative was murdered by another kid carrying a knife.

Yes I blame the mother.

While it's certainly not just mothers, an awful lot of prolific murderers have had horrendous childhoods and emotional incest and a lack of boundaries are also damaging to children.

Anecdotally - I have known quite a few mothers to deny their sons being violent towards their partners, or blame the partner for their sons violence as well. So while I don't think mothers are to blame, I do think that they can play a role in some cases.

I'm no fan of BoJo but how you figure that one??

There was a TV programme called Murderers and Their Mothers. There were a couple of murderers who had doting mothers and violent fathers. Guess which parent was blamed. The mother!

Why not the father though?

Disagree. What about all the parents who have knives in the kitchen, or leave their car keys lying around, are they guilty if their teenage child stabs or runs over someone?

This is true, there are numerous factors at play here but how often do we read on this site about parents bending over backwards to condone or make excuses for their child's anti-social behaviour from a very young age? They blame everyone but themselves, the school is expected to sort everything out instead, Not applicable across the board universally but it needs acknowledging that there are some rotten parents out there.

I've listened to a lot of podcasts on serial killers - an example would be Rose West's mother

A journal realised about an hours worth of conversation with Rose West's mother, audio. It gave me chills. She was absolutely so cold and odd.

Because I can only assume that the poster looks for cheap laughs and likes to ignore the country responsible for the worldwide millions of deaths, for some people nothing bad ever happens beyond their own little nose.

We had an awful neglected childhood, dirty,scruffy, beaten for the slightest thing, looking after the the others when we were just kids ourselves. My parents both worked but spent all their money on going out and enjoying themselves. Luckily we are all quite intelligent and hard working, so we made the best of our adult lives and turned out fine.

I think this is absolutely right, and from what I remember the research seems to back this up as well.

There is a very interesting (but extremely long, the man desperately needs an editor) book called Who's In Charge which looks at the topic of violence towards parents by children (teenagers and adults mostly) including parents killed by children, the theme of the book seems to be indulgent parenting and witnessing domestic violence. I'm only about 30% of the way through so hope it will elaborate a bit more. The author is experienced in the field in a similar way to how Lundy Bancroft is, and his explanation of indulgent parenting isn't the usual rah rah too soft, need discipline, bring back the cane - it's more nuanced than that, which is what is intriguing me to go back.