NOW CLOSED We Need to Talk about Kevin - tell the film makers your views on the topics it raises (spoiler alert) - a £200 Amazon voucher to be won

[NewGirlHelenMumsnet]

Hello. As you may know, the film version of "We Need To Talk About Kevin", based on the book by Lionel Shriver, is out in cinemas soon and we've been asked by the film's producers to find out how you feel about the issues the book/film covers.

WARNING - This thread may well contain spoilers for anyone who hasn't read the book/seen the film.

OK, so, "We Need to Talk About Kevin" has been called a "compelling and repulsive" book about motherhood. It is, as one MNer put it "one of the first novels to put motherhood under the microscope and to state honestly that motherhood isn't always a walk in the park".

It's the story of a woman who doesn't bond with her son - and whose son grows up to do something monstrous. It's deliberately - and unsettlingly - unclear how much the difficult relationship between mother and son was a catalyst for his monstrous actions.

Do come and post your thoughts here on motherhood, bonding, parental guilt, nature/nurture etc etc. It doesn't matter whether you've read the book or not. (This isn't really meant to be a debate about the merits of the book, more about the issues it, and film based on it, raises. Comments will not be used anywhere - the film producers are just interested to hear what you think).

You can read what author Lionel Shriver has to say about it all in the fascinating Q&A we did with her recently - and you can watch a trailer for the film .

Everyone who adds their comments to this thread will be entered into a prize draw to win a £200 Amazon voucher.

Thanks
MNHQ

This would be a very difficult book for me to read.

I had no problems bonding with DS1, depsite a difficult start, healthwise. All the same, as a consequence of the ASD and ADHD he has, he can be very difficult to like, sometimes, because his disability means he can become very angry and aggressive, very quickly and he sometimes appears to have very little conscience.

There is an outdated and thankfully refuted (by most) "refrigerator mother" theory of autism which probably has a lot of basis in observations about children who have attachment disorders, rather than ASD and from what others have said about the book, I can't help but wondering if this is the basis behind the book.

Anyhow, I find DS1's difficulties painful enough, without "entertaining" myself by reading a book which appears to focus on children turning out amoral and misanthropic because of inadequate mothering.

It is not my sort of book and I wont bother watch the film. This is just my taste.

On the subject of bonding; it is not always natural and can take some time after the baby is born, IMO. It is possible to love your kids but at the same time be able to see their faults.

I actually believe from watching my own kids that nature probably takes a greater role than nurture.

I'm sure this will be a great, tense movie but I found it an unpleasant read and a bit contrived in its set up ie difficulty bonding with child = pure evil. Life a lot more complex

Motherhood is often (as I have found) 'you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.'
Motherhood is though, something special; about unconditional love and saying 'wow!' even if you want to say 'what is it?'
Motherhood is something that cannot be explained to some that haven't experienced it. It is about 'life.' it is about 'love.'
I didn't bond with my bump until after my 20 week scan with Ds in case it was a boy and in case he left me (previoius mmc). A week or so after being told he was a boy, I started to bond with him, but it was never ever full on and it took a while after he was born to really bond with him. Sometimes, I find the bond lacking as he hits puberty. Who is this child? this boy who back chats and is rude to me ?
I returned to work when Ds was 17 weeks old. I countered my guilt by saying to myself and others that I had to work to bring up my son. My Son missed me, I missed lots of things...more guilt. You can't repeat the firsts.

I don't think I bonded immediately with Dd either, but it was a little easier until she was born...I wouldn't say there was no bond, but she screamed non stop for 6 months and I felt so alone with it. I wanted to kill her. kill my son and myself. I knew how I would do it too. But I managed to get through those times and miraculously at 6 months on weaning to solids, Dd stopped screaming. I thank God that I loved my children enough to get past that 6 months of sheer hell and we are still here. I can't imagine life without them.

Nature/nurture? Ds (13) has not seen his father for more than 10 years and when he did, it was only occasionally and yet, Ds does things that scream his father. It is clear to me that it is within Ds himself and not learned behaviour.

Motherhood is hard.

I haven't read all the thread, so apols if I am repeating...
I read the book before I had a child and I LOVED it. It was terrifying and tense but above all, it was so refreshing to read a book that didn't portray mothers and motherhood as the absolute bees knees, most fulfilling thing a woman can possibly do. That's not to say that Eva's pain didn't come across, but her pain was compounded by her experience of motherhood (at least with Kevin) being so different from others. And the fact that she was Kevin's mother meant she was inextricably bound to him, despite his deeds. At the time I discussed it with a pal who does have children and was surprised that she held Eva partly responsible for how Kevin turned out - I thought he was pure evil, definite nature, not nurture.
Now, however, that I am a mother, I find it harder to think of Kevin as being born evil. And I really don't want to reread the book or see the film to properly re-evaluate my opnion as I'm now far too wimpy - not sure if that is down to age or motherhood though.
I think Lionel Shriver is brilliant.

I just like the chicken/egg nature of it, ie did Eva not bond with Kevin because he was so vile, or was he so vile because she didn't bond with it?

Of course bonding isn't necessarily natural, that is the whole point. I suppose it is one of the last taboos, and even though KatieM and others are right that in hindsight it's clearly a literary construct, and not necessarily plausible from a mother's perspective (although I found it totally believable), it's still an interesting debate.

This book has haunted me since I read it (about 2 years ago)
I just wonder how the hell I would cope if my children were as dreadful/sad/disturbed as Kevin. I think his Mother had assumed as we all do that everything would be Ok in the end, her baby would be fine...The dawning realization that there was something major wrong with her son must have been so difficult for her, and of course anyone who knows their child doesn't fit the "normal mode" Do all disturbed children who commit horrific crimes start out like Kevin??? doubt it, but would be interesting to know. How much is nature (that scares me, for so many reasons) and how much is nurture and could be avoided.
I am scared about watching the movie as I know what the ending is, but I expect I will see it, think I will need a large drink after though.

I think whatever conclusion you come to about whose 'fault' the ending was will tell you a lot about how you see yourself as a child/mother.

Are psychiatrists and psychologists not coming round to believing that behaviour such as Kevin's is not necessarily psychopathy induced by attachment (or lack of it) issues but by genetic predisposition?

Although I agree that bonding with your child(ren) is natural I think it is more common than let on not to bond immediately with one's child. As someone said some children are just a lot more engaging than others....

I disagree with that, SouthernandCross (at least I think I do, I read it before having children).

I did see Kevin as a malign influence, and I did not think his personality was the fault of his mother. I thought the point where he was sick and she assumed a loving role showed that she was ready to bond with him.

What chilled me (again, this was pre-children, I wonder if had I read it later I would have thought the same) was the effect Kevin had on his parents' marriage - the husband refused to accept his child was anything but normal and this meant the mother was utterly isolated.

I still find the drain cleaner episode truly upsetting, many years later.

Interesteing Robot. I thought those scenes and the ending showed she had some sort of romantic idea of what a mother would be and actually enjoyed the suffering and the drama. She displays many of the traits of NPD.

But what I really think is that it's a classic "What if this happened..?" scenario. Except without the benefit of real life experience it is all a bit carboard cut out. Even if it is beautifully written.

I haven't read the book... I do sometimes wonder if parents of murderers/rapists etc feel guilty - they must have a constant, "if only I'd done/said xxx" feeling...

I have had completely different bonding experiences with my DC - I didn't really like or bond with DS1 for about 2 months. I love him to bits now of course. After I had DS3 and felt an almost instant bond, I did start to have guilt about not feeling it with DS1 and wondered if it would have any effects on him. DS3 is much more cuddly than DS1 but I think that could just be their nature.

Every part of parenthood comes with guilt - I think you just have to hope that you have done everything the best you could and if you child is going to do something awful in the future, you have to believe that there wasn't anything that you could have done/not done to change that - otherwise, you could just drive yourself completely mad with the 'what if's'

Yes the absence of guilt and empathy and the self-centred desire for perfection from everyone else is very evident and it does jar with my experience of being a mother. I'm considering re-reading it now but with the view that Eva has narcissitic personality disorder. I'm wondering if that will make any of her behaviour more sympathetic?

Definition of NPD here for anyone who's interested en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

Yes I think you're right. Speaking as someone knows a little bit about narcissistic mothers that feels right.

I wonder if that was the author's intention? Or just a consequence of having a frame of reference that excludes the experience of being a mother?

I also wondered about Kevin having some sort of undx'd SN (NB not suggesting it was in any way caused by his mother!). And thought that was one unconvincing part of the book - that a child from a wealthy background with delays such as with toilet training would slip through the net medically.

Strangely I didn't read it as being the mothers fault. I saw Kevin as having been born with a difficult nature - possibly psychopathic. I felt his mother recognised this and did her best with him but was undermined by the father refusing to recognise his sons nature and not parenting him correctly. In my opinion the outcome is the fault of the fathers over indulgence and the way he disregards the mothers concerns and treats her like an irrelevance. Kevin sees this too an despises his father. At the end he has a grudging respect for his mother. He knows she knows what he is where his father was blind to it.

I find Lionel Shriver a most annoying author after reading too many of her snide and snippy Guardian columns.

But I did find Kevin an interesting read, and at the time our book group had a lively discussion about it. Interestingly, I retain almost nothing about it - have snippets in my head of the killings, the meal, and a vision of an overly perfect suburban house, but very little else.

Like most people, I think, I find the nature / nurture thing fascinating. Both my children are fabric suckers, as was my husband before them. Now, given that DH does not run around sucking on his sleeves anymore, this is clearly something inate to them as to how to find comfort - both rejected thumbs, bottles, dummies, etc. (and DH was bottle-fed, but they were breastfed, so it is not a similarity there). If something so weirdly unimportant as that is nature, what else might be?

It is also so interesting when you read of identical twins brought up apart with similar tastes, quirks, etc.

I have a friend who is a naturally prickly person. She doesn't want to be, she does many of the kindest things, but she just cannot relax into a crowd. She is adopted. And she has sometimes even wondered aloud herself whether some of that early experience has made her less able to ease into a situation than others. I guess she'll never know, but all her adoptive family are warm, laid back, relaxed, and she is ADORED so it hasn't come from there.

katiemortician- where was the ending revealed in the beginning? I must have missed that bit?

I loved the book, have read it a few times, the first time pre DS. My sympathies lie with Eva. Yes it screams PND but it's not like she didn't try and bond with him. She wasn't ambivalent towards him and neither was Franklyn. His character annoyed me the most, he was so dismissive of Eva's concerns. Seemingly never believed her, never supporting her. Eva was also so obviously deeply saddened by her inability to bond with Kevin. That, alongside her PND and lack of support from Franklyn makes me believe her.

I was hooked by the style of writing though her second book didn't grab me at all. I'm not sure I'll see the film as I generally like to keep the characters I have envisaged in my head as they are

I'm not sure. It's been a while since I read it but I'm sure it's revealed about the school massacre.

I'll have to dig it out and read it now

I read this when pregnant (on mat leave ) after having it hang round the house unread as it looked too much like work. I thought Kevin was probably on the Autistic Spectrum and his mother PND. The book was tedious, but so is Bowlby, so I guess attachment theory just is a bore to read the father met a suitable end. Really feel that the book was written with film in mind.

Ah I see! The massacre is revealed yes but not the other shocker at the end. As in..the extent of his killings shall we say.

Yes that's true. But it didn't feel a huge surprise to me. I was more surprise by the dependency that evolved after the event. That seemed odd to me.