Page 7 | To think there is a sub-class of people in our society

bluewanda · 2023-09-21T20:27:31+00:00

Baby boy died in 'filthy' home with 'traces of cocaine in his system' [[https://mol.im/a/12545263 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.

AnnaBlush · 21/09/2023 23:08

@bluewanda
i do actually agree with your point! I tried to go back earlier and change the word ‘responsible’ to contributed.
The only reason I was highlighting the legal context- is people seem so quick to blame only social workers as if they do not have to follow the law.
I agree ultimately its parents who are responsible for such tragedies

SequentialAnalyst · 21/09/2023 23:09

Look at the house. Would you like to live there?

Pollyputhekettleon · 21/09/2023 23:09

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Is what I said true or is it false?

80skid · 21/09/2023 23:09

I never forget Social Services explaining that you shouldn't judge by "your standards ". The implication being that even if the situation is totally intolerable by "normal" standards, by the standards of the sub class you refer to, it's totally fine and normal. Horrific interaction that was sadly indicative of the under resourced social care system we have. The base line "standard " our society's babies should live above clearly needs to be raised massively

Mistressanne · 21/09/2023 23:09

swimminglessonadvice · 21/09/2023 22:43

What confuses me and I’m from an Immigrant family is how can my Grandparents and parents come here and work in foundaries, mills etc then buy businesses and now we are lawyers and doctors. They came from another country from poverty. They couldn’t speak English or read or write it, yet here are their children and grandchildren in professional jobs.

Whereas those born with the privilege of being born and brought up in this country are trapped in a poverty cycle but we came from poverty, no benefits system and knew education was our way out.

Intelligence, that’s what.
These people even with an education wouldn’t be very bright.
Years ago they would have worked in factories or on the land because otherwise they wouldn’t have any money. And also societal pressure encouraged working.

Pollyputhekettleon · 21/09/2023 23:10

VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia · 21/09/2023 23:08

Rich people abuse children. Remember Saville and Harris? Gary Glitter? Rich people are just better at covering it up.

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What I said is true. Read it as many times as you need to and/or look it up. The education system needs a massive overhaul until people understand basic statistical concepts.

70isaLimitNotaTarget · 21/09/2023 23:10

Detective Inspector Maxwell said it was 'one of the worst addresses' she had seen in her near three decades within the force, with litter trays full of cat urine and feces

Poor wee soul . never stood a chance , did he ? .

MyHornCanPierceTheSky · 21/09/2023 23:11

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Pretty soon, if not already calling someone 'bigoted' isn't going to be the big GOTCHA! that people want it to be!
"Oh no, someone who has completely opposite views to me, has called me bigoted! Boo hoo.'

NeverDropYourMooncup · 21/09/2023 23:13

ConsuelaHammock · 21/09/2023 22:52

I’m ok with eugenics in some instances. Especially if it’s to protect children from the kind of life and death this baby experienced.

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I'm actually rather fond of not being aborted by force - not just for my personal benefit, but because we have no business supporting the forcible abortion and sterilisation of women we don't approve of - it would never stay as 'just' a punishment for being a shit parent, it would become brutalising women deemed to be of poor genetics, of minor learning disabilities, neurodiversity, suffering from trauma, of being the wrong racial make up, being born into poverty - and then, if a forced abortion is a bit unpleasant to read of over one's cornflakes, they'll be oh, so nice and merely forcibly sterilise them instead. best do it before they're likely to first conceive, about 11 years old should cover all outliers. After all, they'll know exactly what girls are going to end up like that, it's just being forward thinking to ensure none of these unsuitable females end up in the breeding pool...

If it's a woman's right to choose whether she continues with a pregnancy because it's her body, it cannot ever be the right of the State to make a decision either way - even when you don't like her. Because giving the State that right means all women lose their reproductive rights and puts us straight back at the point where Europe found itself just under a century ago and China has been enforcing on minorities right up to the current day.

Oblomov23 · 21/09/2023 23:14

I don't agree it's a failings of welfare state or SS, it takes a certain kind of person to do such a thing.

BertieBotts · 21/09/2023 23:17

The use of the term "subclass" is a bit confusing, you seem to mean that you consider people who could neglect a baby to be sub-human, not that they are some kind of sub-class, as others have pointed out, class has nothing to do with this and it is unfortunately not new, babies have been dying due to neglect in horrific circumstances basically since people had a definition for the word neglect.

Is the class thing about judgement of people who don't work or who receive welfare benefits? Because certainly not all people in that situation are neglectful parents.

Or is it about people who are addicts and live in squalor? I don't think anybody is arguing that people living in that situation can safely raise children. I think we would all agree that should be subject to some kind of social services intervention.

Seems like there were severe failures here from social services - with previous children removed there are usually fairly stringent checks I thought? I wonder why that was not done this time. Cutbacks or social workers with too high a workload? Not joined up paperwork?

Poor baby RIP :(

madroid · 21/09/2023 23:18

@bluewanda Could government-funded programmes not make a difference - education, therapy, counseling etc?

Yes, and the last Labour govt funded one. It was called Homestart. It focused on helping families with children that needed help.

But nothing works properly any more. Public services have been underfunded for so long and staffing levels cut across the board. Need has increased through poverty, cost of living and more elderly people as a proportion of the population. We need this govt out so that services can recover.

paintityellow · 21/09/2023 23:20

Oblomov23 · 21/09/2023 23:14

I don't agree it's a failings of welfare state or SS, it takes a certain kind of person to do such a thing.

In some cases it's a person who's mentally ill, completely inadequate, addicted to drugs or alcohol, of such low intelligence they are genuinely incapable of looking after a child, or so damaged themselves they don't even know what a normal home looks like. By allowing people like that to take on full responsibility for a tiny baby the State is failing many vulnerable children. Some children would genuinely be better off being removed from their parents at birth and being adopted into a loving and caring home. And the rights of those children need to be paramount, not the rights of their birth parents to keep them and then neglect or harm them.

msmonstera · 21/09/2023 23:21

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Bored1000 · 21/09/2023 23:22

Everything about it is depressing, what is more depressing is the thought that there are many many more poor little children living through a similar type of hell with useless feckless parents in horrendous conditions that we will never hear about

MyHornCanPierceTheSky · 21/09/2023 23:22

Seems like there were severe failures here from social services
Nope. Seems like the parents were shitty scumbags who neglected and killed their child.
Why do people keep forgiving the bloody parents?!!

T1mumtobe · 21/09/2023 23:22

Flickersy · 21/09/2023 22:59

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.

So given your wish for them all to be sterilised and wiped out, can you tell me why you consider this such a tragedy? I'm not being goady - there's a tonne of cognitive dissonance and lack of real understanding on this thread, not to mention the horrific othering of Them as though they're a different species which We could never be.

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. Most of us on this thread will have been lucky in that we had stable homes, parents who were invested in us, and who were in turn lucky enough not to have serious mental health issues or addictions.

Families and people like those in the story don't have that. They will have been exposed to drug and alcohol abuse, physical abuse from a young age. Possibly a complete lack of schooling. No support network to turn to, and frankly no idea that could even be a possibility. What chance does a child have growing up in that environment? And when that child grows up and has a child of its own, why would you expect their entire history to magically disappear and them to turn into a stable, switched on parent?

The only way to stop this is to break the cycle by seriously ramping up mental health and addiction services, funding social services properly etc.

Exactly. You have hit the nail on the head.

The kids who survive this kind of parenting, often start committing crimes in teenage years and everyone quickly screams "lock them up" and talks about them like they're subhuman, even though 5 years earlier they'd have offered unlimited sympathy. It's depressing as fuck and absolutely a societal problem, these issues are worse in societies with higher levels of inequality but people talk like nothing could be done? You just don't want to have to contribute towards the cost of it.

Fallingthroughclouds · 21/09/2023 23:27

Pollyputhekettleon · 21/09/2023 23:10

What I said is true. Read it as many times as you need to and/or look it up. The education system needs a massive overhaul until people understand basic statistical concepts.

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You are a highly unpleasant person.

BMW6 · 21/09/2023 23:28

madroid · 21/09/2023 23:18

@bluewanda Could government-funded programmes not make a difference - education, therapy, counseling etc?

Yes, and the last Labour govt funded one. It was called Homestart. It focused on helping families with children that needed help.

But nothing works properly any more. Public services have been underfunded for so long and staffing levels cut across the board. Need has increased through poverty, cost of living and more elderly people as a proportion of the population. We need this govt out so that services can recover.

Sorry to break it to you, but Homestart made not a whit of difference. At all.

You really must get it into your head. It's not always Poverty, Housing, Employment

Sometimes it's Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

Women as well as men (please don't try and kid yourself).

CCTVcity · 21/09/2023 23:29

icallitasplodge · 21/09/2023 21:48

I think class is the wrong word. The lady in the manhunt whose baby died in a tent due to her and her partners negligence, was of the upper class.

it’s not class that does this.

Yeah I agree it’s not class. It’s lack of support, resource etc. Which now I write this maybe is class?

Like for example the state of the home - someone with means would have a cat flap or hire a cleaner.
Or the neglect - hire a nanny.

It sounds very sad. I don’t think the parents were active evil in that they purposefully tried to harm the child. But they did neglect to care for them appropriately.

SequentialAnalyst · 21/09/2023 23:29

Oh, all the plebs used to work in factories in the old days Including the DC who had aspirations, but no opportunities?

I have spent many years in the NE and seen first hand the people who have had to live through recessions and so on. I've also experienced mental ill health, and it's not surprising that people who found themselves eking out a living on benefits get depressed.

BertieBotts · 21/09/2023 23:30

MyHornCanPierceTheSky · 21/09/2023 23:05

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. Most of us on this thread will have been lucky in that we had stable homes, parents who were invested in us, and who were in turn lucky enough not to have serious mental health issues or addictions.
@Flickersy I'd like to think the majority of mnetters wouldn't kill their child.

I think the vast majority of people wouldn't (couldn't) kill or neglect any child.

But I'm interested in this (just from a psychology angle) - do you mean that there is something about the people that you perceive to use MN, ("normal" people maybe?) maybe because you've interacted with them albeit only virtually, about me perhaps, about yourself, about any of the other posters on this thread - is there something fundamentally different about all of us, who are naturally horrified and upset by this news story, compared to the parents of this baby (and any other baby who has died from neglect)?

Is it a way of distancing yourself from this outcome, feeling like "that could never happen to me"? (That's understandable).

Do you feel like there are "good" and "bad" people in the world, and if so how does that work - are they choices that we make, are we just born randomly into one category or the other, does everyone start out good and some people become bad (or the other way around?) Is it something that happens to us, parenting, trauma, mental illness?

I'm curious as to what people think about this in general.

(This is not actually directed at the poster I quoted in general - but it was a good example of the mindset that I'm interested in.)

GarlicGrace · 21/09/2023 23:30

Somanycats · 21/09/2023 22:16

There absolutely is a subclass of people in society. They are not a disgrace!! They are learning disabled/ child abuse victims/ foetal alcohol syndrome/ physically disabled/ low IQ/ care system survivors/ mentally ill/ veteran PTSD survivors.... We neglect them. We know full well that they can't cope with life in general and parenthood in particular but we don't want to pay more taxes so we leave them to their own devices and this is what happens. We could improve the outcomes for the children of these failing families but most of us don't want to. It costs £200,000 per year to keep a child in care. Unsurprisingly that's an unpopular use of public money.

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Agreed. I can't read the whole thread, there are too many vicious, smug & supercilious posts not to mention a few nice bits of victim-blaming.

I've known a fair few people who simply don't cope. I'm not that great at coping myself, but I'm thinking of people that have only ever known a life among violence so, naturally, they assume all life is violence and carry on that way. People who were profoundly neglected and abused as children, genuinely have no idea what a safe & loving family environment is like, and have taken refuge in drug abuse since childhood. 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.

I don't think there is "an answer" but I am sure that reductions in social resources lead to increases in problem people who can't find their way through.

Many experts have pointed out that, if we could eliminate child abuse, we'd get close to eliminating crime. There have never been sufficient resources to eliminate child abuse.

SequentialAnalyst · 21/09/2023 23:31

How dare you label anyone a member of a sub-class? It's highly offensive, and I'm considering reporting this thread.

MumblesParty · 21/09/2023 23:32

Greensleeves · 21/09/2023 21:37

It's horrific, but what do you mean by "sub-class"? Do you think there is something fundamentally different about people who end up in horrendous living situations, addiction, poverty, abuse cycles etc? I can see why it is tempting to buy into the idea that those people are congenitally flawed, not like the rest of us etc - the Victorians certainly thought so - but it's not a very constructive approach to what are essentially systemic social problems borne out of plain old poverty, deprivation, inequality of opportunity and lack of compassionate social infrastructure.

Edited

I’m pretty sure that however poor I was I wouldn’t be giving a baby cannabis and cocaine