To think there is a sub-class of people in our society

[bluewanda]

Baby boy died in 'filthy' home with 'traces of cocaine in his system'

https://mol.im/a/12545263

What the hell is wrong with these people. How the fuck can they subject an innocent baby to such a horrific life?! These children should be removed at birth because they don’t stand a chance. It is so utterly depressing.

I grew up in an environment that is exactly like this, one most MNers would consider "subclass."

I have a high IQ, fought like crazy for the right to go to school (it took until I was 23 to be allowed to sit GCSEs), went to university and then post-graduate school, and now have a decent job. No one would ever guess my background from looking at me.

But the damage and the ongoing damage is immense, and I deal with the stigma and need to keep secrets every single day. It's just suffocating and people think if you're from that kind of background, that you're a non-human. What happened to this baby is a horrific tragedy but he's only getting sympathy because he's a baby. If he'd grown up to be a mouthy traumatised 12-year-old skipping school and hanging around parks drinking, how much sympathy would there be for him then?

It's perfectly appropriate that people have more sympathy for a baby than a 12 year old. 12 year olds, whatever their background etc, have some degree of free will, babies have none. 12 year olds can cause problems for other people in society (including babies...), babies do not. That's why Jamie Bulger's killers did serve some time in prison for their actions, but not as much as an adult would have.

Babies grow into children. That's kinda the point.

It's hypocritical to be all sympathy and tears when we all know if this baby hadn't died, in a few short years he would likely have been the kind of child Middle Class Mumsnet hates and demonises.

Either you support child abuse survivors or you don't. If your support and sympathy is conditional on someone being a helpless baby, then you don't actually care about child abuse.

@TheGhostofLoganRoy
Same. It’s very easy for some of these I’m alright jacks, to sit in their middle class ivory towers judging things they know nothing about. Other than reading the skewed perspective of certain nasty tabloids. I like to think life will humble them somehow, if not in this life then the next.

She should have had the baby taken off her at birth.

Nah, it was fucking obvious sooner than that.

Your 'likely' is doing an awful lot of work there you know. If he did grow up to be, say, a Jon Venables, yes, those hideous middle class mums would have hated and demonized him. Because of his actual behaviour. No hypocrisy involved.

'Supporting' child abuse survivors does not mean condoning everything they may ever do in life. Since many child abusers are themselves survivors of child abuse, caring about child abuse involves sometimes 'supporting' them by taking their children into care and/or putting them in jail.

Just stop.

You obviously have an agenda to try to demonise abused kids or kids from backgrounds you feel don't deserve to exist.

Between your hysterical rantings about eugenics and advocating for abused kids and people with low IQ to be forcibly sterilised, your poorly understood ignorance about genetics, your insistence on conflating child abuse with low IQ, your repeated personal attacks on other posters, and now your utterly bizarre insistence on shoehorning Jon Venables into the discussion as much as possible, it's very obvious that there's not just an agenda, but a complete sociopathic lack of empathy or common decency at play.

The fact you hear "abused baby" and your mind automatically goes to "Jon Venables" says everything we need to know about you.

Obviously the 0.00000000000000000001% of abused kids who are torturing and murdering toddlers by the time they're 10 don't deserve sympathy. The vast, vast majority of abused kids/kids from chaotic backgrounds do not grow up to torture and murder toddlers ffs.

No one is talking about Jon Venables, we're talking about the thousands of traumatised children who are intelligent and kind and would never hurt anyone, but who are demonised and thrown away like rubbish due to stigma, or because they act out in harmless ways, or because they don't conform to middle class standards of behaviour because they've never been taught that.

I was completely demonised and treated like human garbage and told I was a sub-human whore (by EVERYONE) from the time I was 12. And oh look, I went on to do a PhD and publish a best seller, and I'd pit my IQ against yours any day.

And still I have to deal with hostility and resentment every single day from mediocre middle class people who are bitter that "street trash" KICKED THEIR ARSES and accomplished so much more than them. And it feels fucking brilliant.

So take your "I read half a Daily Mail article about genetics once" bigoted witterings about eugenics and child murderers elsewhere.

@TheGhostofLoganRoy Swearing, shouting, name calling and misrepresenting what I've said aren't arguments.

@Pollyputhekettleon your posts are definitely the most informative and interesting on here. Ignore the flak.

I want to pay taxes so that social work is well funded and employs people with the time and competence to remove babies like this poor mite from clearly unfit parents. And a care system that actually takes care of children. And mental health services. And drug rehab - it's almost impossible to get into now.

Even with all these things, some people will still be useless. But without them there is no chance. I can't do this myself - I rely on collective action through the state. But that seems to be collapsing.

Agree.

It's unrealistic to reflect the state to do all those things effectively. As another poster said in the past there were much closer communities and the wider family nearby that all offered support. Additionally drugs have become effectively decrimalised and all lifestyles are supposed to be equally valid. But my main point is the state is extremely inefficient at providing support previously provided by wider networks and always will be however much money is put in.

The truth is that any one of us or any one of our children could lose jobs, fall victim to addiction, to a violent relationship etc.

Sure. But that doesn’t mean you end up with a dead baby.

The poor little boy everyone on here is wailing and rending their clothes over would grow up to be one of these "sub human" people you all hate.

Yes, that little kid didn’t stand a chance in hell, thanks to the family and the home he was born into. Perhaps it would have been better to remove him at birth.

Well, I say “perhaps” but it absolutely would, as clearly staying with his parents was the worst possible outcome.

I knew a generally very sweet, intelligent woman who, in her thirties, has had all five of her children removed as babies. She's a heroin addict with a controlling boyfriend.

And thank fuck for that. I honestly feel relieved reading your post. There’s no way anyone who’s “very sweet” would end up having five kids removed IMO. I’m glad they’re presumably in a more stable place now but it’s tragic they had to be subjected to that in the first place.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, governments routinely blamed the behaviour of young male adolescents on the fact that their mothers went out to work.

I shit you not. And then they blamed and guilt-tripped working mothers.

And then they said single parents had to put their children in nursery, so they could go out and earn a pittance, instead of relying on benefits of quite modest amounts, and having to lose, or pay for and claim back, the free prescriptions that were among the few perks of living on benefit. That must have been heartbreaking for many.

Nor could anyone claim for childcare costs provided by the child's own grandparent.

No year's maternity leave back then either - I was entitled to 2 weeks when I gave birth.

And then they made it so that, for economic reasons two parent families had little choice but to have both partners working to keep a roof over their heads

Ex-professional CAB worker in the NE here, so I know of what I speak.

Quite. Sorry, but the person who wrote that original post just sounds hopelessly naive.

Oh - that’s ok then! FFS 🤦‍♀️

It looks like they engaged well with other services then it went wrong at two months. Because there was only a CIN plan in place home visits wasn't enforced because thresholds hadn't been met yet and no-one had individual responsibility for this case to push for any further action. Normally if a woman has had children removed and gets pregnant again, she is given a chance based on the father taking responsibility. It should have been set out in the CP plan. There's been mistakes made from the pre birth plan until the baby has died.

You can talk about plans and thresholds all you like, but ultimately no one is to blame but the parents themselves.

OP, Have you been able to make choices in your life?
Such as, which school to go to, which job to get, where to live?

Have you ever suffered from violent parents, alcoholic parents, gambling parents, mentally ill parents, parents who didn't care how you did at school?

What effect do you think that has on the children of such people? Do you think they somehow know how to parent by instinct, or what?

Those children, who have managed to get to their 20s and 30s, those are the people you are blaming and saying they form a "sub-class."

What child makes a choice over which school they go to? Of course I never got to choose - my parents chose my school and that was that. I did have a choice over which job to get and where to live when I turned 18 though, as we all do. Not sure what your point is exactly?

Not saying that such an upbringing means you will become a bad parent.
But read the Relationship Boards, AIBU, etc and you will see this is a common pattern. Such an upbringing is hard to overcome, but many people manage it. Some do not. Have some compassion.