To feel scared about having kids, especially boys, after watching Adolescence on Netflix?

[ByCheekyDreamer]

Just watched Adolescence on Netflix and it honestly terrified me. Seeing what teenagers, especially boys, go through in today’s world - social media, peer pressure, mental health struggles - makes me wonder how anyone navigates parenting without constant fear. Am I overthinking or do others feel the same?

Oh well it you don't know anyone then it must never happen...

It's based on the multiple and repeated incidences of male on female violence. The week it came out there was that news piece about that man who had killed his ex and her mum and sister, basically because she had rejected him (sorry can't remember his name)

So please let's not pretend the entire scenario was made up from nothing.

Intelligence is important to understanding, if you have a limited education or don't have the ability to evaluate and filter that information then you are much more susceptible to being the victim of indoctrination as you literally lack the intellectual capacity to question things.

What you are arguing doesn't make any sense as the more educated the society, the better. My Mum's job was relevant to the subject of this discussion; this is not an dissertation and we are not in a court of law, it's Mumsnet, a chat forum, like many others on this thread I'm posting my opinion with anecdotal references which is perfectly acceptable to do on a chat forum- how long have you been on here that you don't know that?

Victims of domestic abuse are not indoctrinated they are victims of violence and are acting out of fear. What German party? Many people who can't deliberate or understand things at a deeper level are simplistic and are lacking the intellectual capacity to do so. With young teenagers it maybe simply because they literally do not have the intellectual capacity to do so as they are not fully formed.

What are the reasons that are so persuasive that you are referring to?

From Google so nobody nitpicks "The concept of cultural decay can be associated with a decline in cultural and intellectual pursuits, leading to a fragmented society with fewer universally shared cultural references. This can result from the rapid production of cultural content, making it difficult to maintain a common cultural canon.
Some argue that cultural decay can be characterized by economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural and intellectual exhaustion, even at a high level of material prosperity and technological development. This perspective suggests that cultural decay can be a precursor to societal collapse, where a civilization loses its cultural identity and social complexity."

Of course we aren’t talking about the boys that don’t kill others but end up killing themselves. 200 suicides a year in teenagers. Most are boys.

Deliberately haven’t watched Adolescence as I know that I would find it far too upsetting and have enough stress in my life as it is. I have two sons 22 and 25 and, although they have had their moments, they both have Uni degrees, good jobs and lovely girlfriends. Please don’t assume that all young men/boys are violent psychopaths.

Also, while there are obviously some problem teen boys, a lot of people massively exaggerate the issue.

Teenagers always have and always will want to shock adults. When I was young it was a skin haircut, swearing, and listening to punk and pogoing.

These days the above would probably just be shrugged at. But, all the ‘isms’ scare adults, so teens act up to it. The majority don’t mean any of it and are nice boys who will stop posturing when it either stops being effective or they just grow out of it.

@Newbutoldfather do you work in a school? Why should girls and female staff have to put up with some of the awful behaviour and attitudes shown by quite a large number of male students. Do you believe in ‘boys will be boys’, because that is one shit attitude

@crumblingschools ,

I used to teach.

Understanding Is not condoning. But an overreaction is just what they are looking for.

it’s just pointing out that wanting to shock is normal in adolescence.

@Newbutoldfather a local school did staff survey, a number of female staff said they were scared of a number of students. This is a secondary school in some would call a naice neighbourhood. Is that fine? And they can see that this behaviour is being fuelled by the likes of Andrew Tate. Did you read the OFSTED review on child on child abuse? This behaviour should not be excused as adolescents like to shock

@crumblingschools ,

It is about knowing individual pupils and dealing with the behaviour, and not the ideas (which should be dealt with, but calmly and patiently).

When I was teaching, we actually had a professional organisation come in to talk to the boys. They said that they never went in head-to-head and tried to rubbish Tate, as that was counterproductive, but to replace him with positive role models.

But my point is that for every 10 boys mouthing off in a Tate-like way, 8 will be decent boys trying to look cool and shock adults and 2 will be more hard core. The ways of dealing with the 8 vs the 2 should be different.

As for my own teaching, I focused on my subject in lessons and didn’t tolerate distractions of any kind and, in form times, I practised free speech.

It didn’t mean I didn’t strongly challenge misogyny of any kind; I very definitely did. But I didn’t rush to detentions, as that would just make them think I was a part of ‘the matrix’.

I think I did a good job but then it is hard to know as you don’t really see what kind of adults emerge at the end.

I'm only watching now. The message is am getting is to raise your children to encourage their self esteem. I have 3dc (dd1 21, dd2 19, ds 17) and I genuinely think that if their own self esteem is OK they won't be so vulnerable to peer pressure and they won't be so vulnerable to this hatred of people who would "put them down"
I don't believe in, and never gave, checked their phones. We have good relationships where they can talk to me. Checking their phones causes distrust and distance. My mum was always trying to tell me what to do, so I learnt to be sneaky (no mobile phones I those days, but the same old story!)
If he had a more open relationship with his parents, maybe ge could have discussed the bullying he was subjected to. Maybe they could have supported him and made him feel better about himself ( had this with dd2 and her toxic friendship group)
Look, I'm absolutely NOT blaming the parents, who did the best they could and didn't know half of what was going on, but all this "check their phones" hysteria is going to be just as damaging

I don't think that it is a majority of boys or even a large number though - I am worried that we are demonising boys here.

I watched this thinking the parents were 90% to blame, how can you not know what your little kid is up to, maybe a bit different if close to adulthood but even then i have a late teen DS, I absolutely know him and his he has arrived at being the youngest man he is - which is socially conscious, caring and intelligent. I would certainly have known what he was all about at the kids age in the programme!

Young man not 'youngest man'.

Everybody misses the point that it was the mum who allowed him to go out late at night and didn't know where he was.

Don't let your kids hang out in town alone at night.

Simples.

Tbf I was surprised at a 13 year old out unsupervised at night. That's not something I would have allowed

People are talking as if this were a documentary! It is fiction.

13 year olds who kill are vanishingly rare. Thirteen year olds who are intelligent, literate and from (relatively) stable and loving families who kill are almost non existent (can anyone recall one?).

I watched this last week with my two teenage sons. We all thought it was unrealistic and over rated. I also thought it was turgid and trite.

Very few males are deviants - and this is a fictional programme.

Mates

I have a delightful 18 yo son.

He's adorable.

There were two children involved. One ended up dead. She was also out at 10.30pm…
It’s boys and girls alike. Very scary.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yr0zw65lro

Not all boys but too many : More than a third of secondary teachers have reported misogynistic behaviour from pupils at their school in the last week

Im not being funny, but the family in Adolescence would probably have said the same about their son.

I genuinely believe you are being very naive.

In my daughter’s year at school (Y9), the boys have had to be pulled aside for ‘chats’ about Andrew Tate twice this school year.
One of the boy’s parents had to brought in due to their son exercising coercive control and manipulation over his girlfriend (a girl in my daughter’s class - they have now broken up, obviously, but she needed two weeks off school to recover sufficiently.)
In the last week of term, the school took out a whole morning for Years 9-13 for a workshop on masculinity.

The school isn’t doing this for fun. Parents aren’t happy that it was felt it was required. There is a REAL problem right now, and a clear and present danger to girls and women.
Writing it off as a teenage boys’ desire to shock or get attention does nobody any favours.

The problem with your example is that you are only considering it from the boys’ point of view. So 8 of the 10 don’t really mean it, but 2 do. Well, TWO DO! That’s 20%. Pretty scary.
And for the rest…

For the girls, all 10 of those boys’ comments LAND. Whether they were sincere or not, they have impacted the girls.

The boys will be boys crap needs to stop.

With the girl being coerced and controlled at aged what 13/14 which is very young to be in a 'relationship' anyway, where are the parents of the girl, doesn't the Father of the girl have anything to say about it? Who lets their daughter at that age enter a relationship full stop!

I have teens and as in my day, girls at their school have also bullied and are scary and intimidating - yesterday on the BBC news, one of the main articles was of the 80 year old man who was killed by two young people, the girl was 13 but committed the crime at 12! One of the most violent children in my DC's school was a girl, she was violent at primary school and has been expelled at secondary school. Tbf we live in a very bohemian area and the attitudes of the boys tend to reflect those of their parents so there hasn't been any Tate or manosphere talks at their comp. In fact the opposite, when the girls were being sanctioned for skirt length, parents complained about the sexism of this position. The boys would gather around girls in corridors and hide them from the teachers to prevent the girls being sanctioned by the school. In the end, the school got rid of measuring the school skirts. I think this is a bit of a bubble though and in the wider world it is a problem but I think increased violence overall is a problem. That said, I attended a very big and rough London comp in the 90s, loads of fights between boys and some boys definitely carried knives as incidents on some London buses, so I can't relate to it being better back in the day as my DC have a immeasurably better experience than me!