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.

WidowWadman Sakura said that statistically women are most at risk from men that they live with, and so if women look at those statistics they might draw the logical conclusion that they should not live with a man.

That makes perfect sense.

She isn't saying that all men are dangerous, if that is how you (decided to) read it.

larry we all live in the same society and are moulded by it. I would agree that it is a patriarchal society.

That doesn't mean that all men are murderous bastards, though.

I don't deny that psychosis exists, why would I do that.

I'm saying that it is complex and it is a word that is used to describe many different mental health manifestations of many different mental health pathologies.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

I don't watch TV Larry.

OTOH, larry, if a woman has gone to the police multiple times about DV, and says she he has tried to kill her, and then he does kill her... It doesn't take an expert to see that there may have been a few minor warning signs....

I also don't think that we can know for sure that the men who commit family annihilation were upstanding and normal beforehand. The people who could say are all dead.

Larry I do wish you would stop comparing random accidents with domestic violence and murder.

It is extremely offensive and shows a lack of understanding of DV, along with an extraordinary lack of empathy and intellectual honesty.

Sardine,

True. The point is we cannot know, so let's not assume the worst unless there is some evidence to support it.

what is the worst? That he slapped his wife about before he killed her?

I think the worst assumption we could make is that the tendency of men to be more violent has some endocrinological excuse (as alluded to by larry's reference testosterone being a force for goodnand evil, above) - especially as this lends weight to my growing belief that humanity as a whole would flourish if the male population dwindled to a tiny minority

I hate my iPad

StewieGriffinsMom - How do you know that he falls into the class of people who aren't psychotic and don't have any other mental illnesses? Just from reading a newspaper article?

A coincidental outbreak of rare psychosis

there's been a similar incident this weekend just up the road from me in Suffolk, no children involved so only similar rather than the same - UNLESS she hanged him, to make it look like suicide, then hysterically strangled herself to make it look like murder

mustn't assume the worst

Aye I just read that story on the BBC and it is quite different there - I thought they were hinting that it was arson by an outsider that had killed everyone?

Don't know.

Fact is that man killing wife and children and self is reported with reasonable regularity in the papers.

If you include men killing women they know then themselves then there are many many more cases.

Observing the gendered nature of domestic violence is not a personal attack on you and your sons Larry.

What do you want? Women to shut the fuck up about being beaten and murdered so that your feelings don't get hurt?

Cry me a fucking river.

and if you include men killing themselves

why do men kill so often?

www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/16/mother-kill-children-society-_n_850094.html

www.canadiancrc.com/Infanticide-Women_Who_Kill_Their_Babies.aspx

The killing of children is split evenly if you check the statistics that are available and you don't blindly just believe what you want to believe.

Why do so many mothers kill their children?

Why do so many fathers kill their children?

Why do so many parents kill their children?

And working from that statistical base a problem that's with us can be addressed.

Larry you've got the patience of a saint debating an issue with people who's minds are disingenuous.

How long has it taken you to dig those out

The fact that women kill their (usually very young) children has been discussed a lot on this thread.

However the mode seems to be different - as also discussed, the situation where a partner, and children are killed, followed by suicide seems to be something that men do. When women kill their children they usually seem to sit there and wait for the police, and they don't usually murder their partner as well, so that's a different kettle of fish.

I think it is likely that the underlying reasons for men and women committing these acts are likely to be different. If it is assumed they are the same, then surely valuable information will be missed.

Do you agree with larry that 2 women dying at the hands of a man they know every week is neither here nor there? Seeing as you like his posts so much.

When you look at statistics regarding child murder, you need to remember that more women have sole care of children than men, and take that into account. ie you need to weight the number of murders by each sex against how many of each sex are actually living with / in contact with the children.

demetersdaughter using your logic the I imagine that you want to shut down

operation trident
police initiatives and work to do with "honour" killings
local charities that work with young people in areas with lots of gang related violence
any charities that openly advertise to one group over another eg womens aid, breast cancer charities, charities to assist underprivileged white males in areas with lots of poverty

And so on and so forth.

Cuibono,

"Endocrinological excuse"?

Why not try an experiment and inject yourself with some synthetic testosterone for a while. Anabolic steroids are (apparently) available at most gyms. Or, if you are not up for a bit of self experimentation, just read any article on "roid rage"

This idea that gender analysis can ignore many hundreds of millennia of biological evolution is a chimera. Evolution and hormones do not excuse any criminal or antisocial act by men but they are the starting points of understanding "natural" male behaviour and a roadmap of how males can be moulded into valuable contributors to society.

"When women kill their children they usually seem to sit there and wait for the police, and they don't usually murder their partner as well, so that's a different kettle of fish."

So that's alright then?! Frankly, were my wife to murder my children, I would prefer her to murder me simultansously.

demetersdaughter do you have statistics on how many women kill their partners and their children and themselves (family annihilation), as opposed to women who kill their children without killing their partners or themselves (generally infanticide but sometimes older children)?

As was said earlier, no-one is disputing that mothers kill their children.

However what was being discussed here is a completely different phenomenon - that of family annihilation.

I don't think it is helpful to mix the two up in a 'women do it too' sort of way.

Although there is no doubt an interesting discussion to be had on what drives women to kill their children.