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?

Mother blaming

I'm the first person standing up for single mothers (and have been there myself), but I agree with you @samuelabelly. From listening to true crime and psychologists, there's something about the mother-son dynamic when it goes wrong. It seems to pop up often.

Another example is fathers encouraging sons to harm animals. So it's not just mothers. Personally, I have no problem blaming an abusive or enabling mother (or father) for how their child turned out. Childhood traumas are a big factor, enabling bad/criminal behaviour only makes things worse

Mother blaming

more like blame deflecting, making a victim out of a killer. Crazy mum, absent/abusive dad, bullied at school... and there you have the world's smallest violin

@OutsideLookingOut I think you'll find a lot of mums admitting to the thought they'd cover up their sons crimes if they could

I would. Unless it involved a child

Again I'll make the point that over indulgence, lack of discipline and the child being the primary relationship ie emotional incest are all also abuse.

A pp said distinguish between abuse and spoiling and the latter has a good childhood but being overly loved and protected is not good parenting. Kids need boundaries.

@Boomboom22 I think you'll find a lot of emotional infest with mums nowadays and their precious boys. Can think of a few insta perfectly dressed boys I know personally

One of the mums states in her bio 'I was born to dote on my beautiful boys'. They are beautiful but she is incredibly over the top about them and posts regularly about her crying with the thought they'll grow up one day and be married. How could she cope? Etc etc.

She has no DDs

Genuinely fascinated with your post.

I'm so very sorry for what you went through x

I agree with other posters on here that it’s a mixture of nature and nurture, however mothers are disproportionately blamed out of both parents. Some of the worst serial killers were badly abused by the mothers, but it’s no excuse. A lot of the most feminist true crime podcasts are really sounding anything but lately.

Hold on… people are mixing over indulgent mothers and abusive backgrounds together when they are completely different things?

No - two separate causes that lead to a similar looking outcome but presumably in different ways.

Most people are someone else's child. Elliot Turner's girlfriend who he murdered had parents. They suffered a great deal not just from the muder of their daughter but from his parents who covered it up. I can't understand how a decent person would do that.

@OutsideLookingOut again but not 'their' child. Just to put it out that from that perspective

I'm not sure tbh. My sister I'm quite sure she will end up doing something terrible.

She was extremely violent when I was growing up towards me and very very jealous of me but my mum used to cackle when she'd beat me up and say I shouldn't wind her up. I was most certainly not winding her up I was scared of her. She also used to hurt animals in front of me and I was so terrified I never told anyone.

I've still got scars where she literally ripped skin off of me. When I had dc I asked my shit mother to ensure my dc was never allowed near her but my shit mother thought the sun shone out my sisters arse so introduced my dc to her behind my back (my mum was only supposed to babysit a few hours at my home) and then eventually my dc became old enough to tell me that she had seen my sister at her house. My sister also stabbed me with a household item as my mum just stood there saying my fault for annoying her so if anyone said my mum was to blame I'd be nodding along in agreement.

When I eventually couldn't take it anymore (and by now im almost 30 years old) I said if my mum continued to allow this abuse to go on I'd have to report it. My mum then went on a rampage round my whole family telling them I was the violent one and I was making it all up. I've cut them all off now but my mum then went and told my job (!) anything I say against her and my sister is made up, this then made people believe her as she 'clearly felt very strongly about it' and I also lost people I thought were my friends because my mum cried and said she wishes I wasn't evil but I was born this way. I never lay a finger on anyone and I truly think my mum bred a monster and is only to happy to hide it.

really?? If my son committed a crime there is no way I would help cover it up. I would encourage them to go to the police. I’m amazed people think that way.

Yes! You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

I think of those psychopaths who grew up torturing animals. Thank goodness my kids don't do that! But if they did, what could you really do about it? You could punish them, but then they'd just learn to be secret about it. You could talk about it, do normal consequences, but what if they just kept doing it? You could keep them away from animals, but then they're not practising good interactions. You could get "help" but that often doesn't help either. There's only so much you can do.

I feel like, whatever a mother tried to do, if her child ended up murdering someone she would, in retrospect, be blamed, even if people are vague about the actual mechanics of what she could have done to prevent the crime.

That being said, I think your teenage son will get through it and improve. I have heard this many times from parents of older teenagers that one day they just turn a corner and become decent humans. At 16-17 I think.

Murderers are rare, but teenagers who lie, steal stuff and fight with their siblings are really common, so please don't think I'm talking about your son when I imagine psychopaths! Completely different. But yeah, just that idea people have that you can 100% control your kid's behaviour, when you can't.

It does have influence, but it's not absolute (?). Like eating well and not smoking helps prevent cancer but you can still get it.

But maybe it is absolute, like language. You 100% learn your mother's language, if she's present, and not some random other one. I feel that murdering is more like cancer though because as PPs pointed out, there is no childhood circumstance or event that guarantees it.

Yes it's verbatim. They were critical of the parents not cooperating with police and then went a step further and said the mother was enabling and implied she was responsible for the murder by overlooking his behaviour time and time again. That's how I interpreted their comments anyway.

Although there's no evidence he murdered anyone before this and who knows what they were saying to him afterwards. They may have been in shock, or he lied to them, who knows.

And what could she have done to prevent it? It's vague. Just been less enabling. She didn't actually do anything wrong before the murder (that they mentioned anyway) so maybe she was too invested in the whole mothering thing, too protective. Although maybe she was aware of her son's emotional and social vulnerabilities and that's why she was over protective. It's hard to know.

I was reading an interview with Harry Roberts yesterday (he and accomplices killed three policemen in Shepherd’s Bush in the 1960s). His parents ran a pub in east London and his mother used to sell on the black market. She continued this when they later owned a cafe.

Not much is mentioned of his father, it’s feasible, given the dates that he was killed in the war.

When he and his associates murdered three men, who were no threat to them, in cold blood, his mother still visited him until she died. There was a thread fairly recently on here where the majority of posters said they’d stand by their child if they committed a crime.

What would be the point of not standing by them? If they had no family support, they'd be far more likely to reoffend, wouldn't they?

@Zuyi Possibly, I couldn’t stand by someone who had murdered people in cold blood. I mean, I suppose you can never say until you’re in those circumstances, but there are very few crimes I’d forgive and I don't think I could stand by someone who had gone out with the intention of hurting/killing someone.

I'm so sorry. Your sister sounds like a psychopath/sociopath... your mum sounds like a narc, especially with the deflecting and gaslighting