So sad to hear another father has killed his wife and child

[spongefingeranyone]

Have heard on the news today that a recently sacked police officer has killed his wife and youngest child, with the eldest two escaping with dreadful injuries. It just makes me so sad for his family and very very angry that another father has seen fit to do this terrible thing.

My condolences to the family.

I think you're probably right.
The feminist section is the way to go with this because from what I can see you're totally ignoring any argument or explanation as to why people do this particular crime.
And to be honest.
Every thread i've read about feminism on MN goes back to the same place and the same facts and figures.
It's boring and obvious.
Leaves thread for something way more interesting.
Read Larrys links if you get bored.

Beach,

2 per week or 100 per year or 1 per 300,000 women/annum is, in any analysis, a rare anomaly.

I find it somewhat sad that you prefer to extrapolate from a 5+ standard deviation event than from your kind DH, who is probably far more representative of males in general.

" violence and neglect of children by mothers with PND is predominantly female behaviour. There is no question that PND is a gendered issue."

Well yes and it was mentioned upthread. The authorities keep quite a close eye on women when they are pregnant and after they have had babies through mecanisms such as antenatal appointments, health visitor appointments, 6 week check and so on. There are checks for PND, probing questions are asked. If there are any question-marks over how a mother is coping various things are triggered and always with an eye on the child/ren to check their care is up to scratch.

That is because there is a mental health risk associated with pregnancy, birth and looking after small children.

It is accepted that men commit most of the violence towards women and that in pregnancy women are at risk from their partners moreso than at other times. And all the rest of it. What would happen if it were suggested that men having babies were scrutinised and checked on in the same way that women are? I can tell you that there would be outrage and people would say it was a huge infringement of privacy and attacking family life and nanny state gorn mad and all the rest of it. It's interesting don't people think - that women are checked out and scrutinised to check they are up to the job, but not men. Why is that I wonder.

"Every thread i've read about feminism on MN goes back to the same place and the same facts and figures.
It's boring and obvious."

Well yes
Because the facts and figures are the ones that everyone including people like government use
And it is boring when people refuse to see right what is in front of their faces.

Now we are being told that 2 women killed every week by partners/ex partners is an anomoly and therefore should not be investigated to see if there are any trends etc.

I find that staggering.

"From what I can gather the term family annihilation has been coined to fit around the man/fathers murderous acts.
When in reality it's the same acts that mothers/women commit for roughly the same motives."

I can't remember reading of a case where a woman has killed her partner, her children and then herself. While I seem to read about a man doing this once a week or so.

Does it really happen just as often? I would like to see Uk figures if poss. Because I simply do not believe it.

What cuibono said.

I don't think anybody is disputing that women kill their children too - I think that is a gendered issue too.

Why is it offensive to frame a discussion of either of these issues as extremes on a spectrum of gendered behaviour?

I can see that it is not an easy subject, and one that can make us uncomfortable, because it shines a light on potential flaws in the current set-up of society.

If men killing their families is not an extreme form of domestic violence, then what exactly is it?

I also don't see where the term "family annihilation" has any indication that it is a male crime in the wording

I find some of the comments on here really odd.

Like turning away from the fact that most violent crime in the UK is committed by men, to say "oh well no-one would argue with the fact that female on male violence is on the rise". Is it? And is it now at the epidemic levels that male on female, male on male and male on child violence is at?

But you see Larry, I don't do I'mallrightjackism - I try not to anyway. My DH being a decent bloke doesn't alter the reality of the figures for domestic violence one jot.

I'm not saying all men do it, I'm saying too many men do it.

Actually the idea that women kill their children because of depression doesn't sit very comfortably with me even if it is true, it's too close to the idea that we are generally subject to unstable moods and emotions making us unfit for anything much when it must be the other way around - violent crime is almost always committed by men. Men are not very emotionally stable on the whole because they start wars, fights and sexual aggression.

But if I think about the isolation and exhaustion and economic dependence that so often goes hand in hand with looking after babies and children the depression makes a bit more sense.

"2 women a week is not a rare anomaly and I can not believe anyone could be so stupid as to suggest that."

Now that is a really stupid statement!

So a 1 per 300,000 event is not anomalous and is, by inference, normal? Well, about 4 people per week choke to death on food, so clearly choking is a fairly normal event and not anomalous at all. I must take more care when I eat this evening.

I agree - I think this is another area where we need to look at the set up of society.

That was in agreement with cuibono.

If you think of two women a week as more lives lost than those of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan does it feel a bit more pressing?

It's not a rare anomoly larry
And it's also not normal (although I don't think that you mean normal do you, very frequent might be a better phrase)

There is an area between those two extremes you know.

Larry that is such a stooopid thing to post.

Does food choke you on purpose? Does it plan choking you? Are there events in the food's life which make it more likely to want to choke you? Does food try to get certain people to eat it with the intention of choking them?

Shall I go on or do you get the point?

Choking on food is an accident.

Beating or murdering one's family is behaviour.

Serial killers are a rare anomoly.
Or getting struck by lightening.
Or someone accidentally knocking your house down as they have the wrong address.

2 women a week being killed by people they know is not rare nor an anomoly.

Cuibono,

Well, still only half as pressing as dealing with the choking on food issue.

And, by the way, your paragraph below is rather self contradictory. It is fine to posit, without any real analysis, that men are not very emotionally stable but the fact that women are subject to unstable moods "does not sit comfortably with you". Well, guess what? Human beings of both sexes are probably too intellectually developed, as a species, for our own good and are subject to all kinds of psychological problems. Trying to explain away one sex's problems based on being exploited by the other and saying one sex is inherently mentally unstable is a very extreme (and completely illogical) proposition.

"Actually the idea that women kill their children because of depression doesn't sit very comfortably with me even if it is true, it's too close to the idea that we are generally subject to unstable moods and emotions making us unfit for anything much when it must be the other way around - violent crime is almost always committed by men. Men are not very emotionally stable on the whole because they start wars, fights and sexual aggression."

Yeah well Larry whilst you continue in your campaign to stop getting food to attack people, I think I'll continue to pay attention to people attacking people.

I will admit that as both my children have had choking incidents with oranges, I tell them to be careful when they eat oranges, so perhaps we can draw a parallel after all? I'm not an orange hater by the way - I just learn from experience.

So going on your logic it is more pressing to look at, say, people being injured at work with office equipment than child sexual abuse? Given that the former is more common than the latter?

Do you think that men who murder people should be pursued at all? Or do you think resources should be diverted into ensuring that all food in the UK is the consistency of porridge?

Beachcomber,

Accidents can be avoided, as can behaviours. Halving fatal road accidents would be far more beneficial to the population than ending all murder. Diseases can also be cured which is why we devote research time and effort into so doing, even though it would be hard to accuse a Yersinia Pestis bacterium of malice.

The idea that changing rare behaviours is somehow more pressing than avoiding accidents is far from obvious. I think the reduction in SIDS over the last 20 years has done far more for parents than any progress in psychology or criminology.

And 2 per week is still rare and an anomalous. On a gaussian distribution, it is 4.5 standard deviations away from the mean. For an experiment to be significant, it is normally done to 2 or, at most, 3 standard deviations. These events are so far along the tail of the distribution as to be almost off the chart.

Women have been excluded from education, employment and all areas of public life for many hundreds of years ostensibly and partly on the basis of their inherent mental and emotional fragility. This still echoes loudly in the lives of women today. It is not a far away in the distant past thing. Yet the evidence is that men are much less rational and much more 'emotional' because they commit the bulk of violent offences against other human beings.

sorry, against other human beings and women

So to sum up

Women getting killed by men is not a gender issue, as sometimes women kill men too
Family annihilation (partner, children, suicide) is not a gender issue, even though it's almost always a man who does it
PND and perinatal psychosis are gender issues, and women should be watched closely when they are pregnant and after they have given birth to make sure they are not doing anything wrong / are not a risk to themselves or others
Female on male violence is on the rise and is the real issue that everyone needs to concern themselves with, even though no stats have been provided to show that is the case and that it is on a par with male violence

So bottom line is, women are awful and you need to watch them or they will be mad and evil
Men should be allowed to do whatever they like and no-one should question it

PHEW! I think we've got there.

and rare things happen quite often but are not worth doing anything about