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

It's made pretty clear early on that he killed a number of people and that it took place at school, but the 'reveal' at the end is more about exactly how this happens and who's involved. So I think you can see it both ways: you know from the beginning that he's a multiple murderer but you don't know everything, still, till the end.

I am planning to go and see the film and to re-read the book before I do. It has been at least 6 years since I read it, and I wasn't a parent then. I remember that most of my sympathies lay with Eva, so I will be interested to see how it strikes me now. Kevin seemed like, frankly, an unpleasant child who had potential psychopathic tendencies. A lot of my sympathy for Eva came, as others have said, from her isolation - she wasn't a saint herself but being a mother to Kevin really put walls between her and everyone else. It may be that she should have tried harder to dismantle those - if she had been more honest with others outside her household about how dreadful it all was, then at least it might have helped her, if not Kevin. In another context she might have just packed up and left, but I guess she felt that was always a step too far.

The major lesson for me that I can see in it now (this is before rereading, mind) is the value of being united if you are two parents living and bringing up the child together, and of sticking together and taking a stand and a comon approach to parenting when trouble arises. The gulf between Eva and Franklyn was just terrible for the whole family.

I will be very interested to see the film. And yes, it would be nice to see an exploration of difficult-to-raise children that considered the fathers as being just as responsible for how their kids turn out as the mothers.

Thanks to Freud it was accepted currency for many decades that a person's problems could be traced to their childhood and they way their parents, most importantly their mothers, raised them. This isn't just 19th century clinical thought. In the 50s/60s/70s it was going strong. Theories included that of the schizophrenogenic mother (a theory by a clinician called Linz that a certain style of mothering could induce schizophrenia) and Expressed Emotion (a style of family communication that a clinician called Leff suggested led to relapses in mental illness).

I have not read the book in question (I only heard about it after becoming a parent and it did not sound like a wise book to immerse myself in during those early hormone filled and sleep deprived years) but it clearly plays on those theories and the classic nature nurture debate.

The thing is that the classic nature/nurture debate should now be informed by the pleothra of research that suggests the psychoanalysts, and popular culture, were wrong to give so much credit to nurture. For example is is now known that almost all mental disorders have genetic predispositions behind them. Studies of separated identical twins are fascinating because of the shockingly clear conclusions they lead to that our personalities are almost entirely genetically determined.

Now that I am a mother myself I can't understand how anyone ever thought that babies were born as "blank slates" for their parents to fill in. From day 1 my two girls had very different personalities and after years of trying I admit that few of my efforts to shape them have led to much.

It is hugely liberating to accept that as a parent you are not responsible for forming your children's personalities.

I say this thought is liberating because I seem to be lucky enough to have given birth to two pretty sunny creatures. Had I given birth to a very disturbed child I am sure I would not liberated by the idea that environment is unlikely to fundamentally change an inherited character.

Loved the book, was a bit scary reading it during my first pregnancy I found myself flitting between feeling immensely sorry for her and hating her.

I favoured behaviourism until I met my DSDs - they are non-identical twins and you can barely tell they are related, their personalities were different from the outset.

I got to about page 60 before throwing the book across the room into the 'take to Oxfam' box. I found it unreadable, the characters unrealistic and quite honestly, there are only three books I have ever not managed to get to the end of (and I get through about four a week at the minute).

Sorry, I'm probably not your ideal contributor but it was one of those books everyone raved about and I was desperately disappointed in it. :(

What I found most interesting about the book was talking to other people about it. We all had different ideas about why Kevin turned out the way he did.

Fascinating book and compelling writing but I did feel it was a bit unreal. Clearly you have to exaggerate real life and cut out all the boring bits to make a novel or a film but... even so I wasn't surprised afterwards to discover Lionel doesn't have any children. It does read like someone who doesn't have kids grappling with theoretical problems - imagining what it might be like if it all went wrong to the ultimate extreme. It would be interesting to see the response of a parent of a child who has done something terrible - whether it resonates with them.

I do think sometimes the nature/nurture debate is a bit wrong-headed though, what genetic research appears to show, at our current level of understanding, is that genes are jolly important but interact with the environment - it's not either/or and them environment is far more than 'the way my Mother treated me' as well. The way genes are expressed depends on a million and one things - and there are theories amongst some behavioural psychologists that parents treat siblings differently at least in part because they are reacting, unconsciously, to the different genotypes.)

I didn't think it came across as the mothers' fault either. She projected feelings onto him he couldn't have - preferring the father at under a week old. Also, I thought the level of emotional subterfuge he was meant to have at a young age was unrealistic. I thought she came across as someone who recognised her son's negative potential and tried to parent it. He clearly despised his father, who thought they were bonded. I also read it as he didn't kill his mother due to a grudging respect, although I am now wondering if it was to punish her and show her what he was capable of.

What do I think about motherhood? There's always something you could do better. A part of it is permanent guilt.

I didn't like Shriver's writing style one bit. Too anal and self-conscious. But I love Swinton and the story was pretty compelling, so I'm sure I'll see the film.

I thought the overall story was way too extreme to raise relevant issues for most parents: the majority of us don't give birth to serial killer children. But it did make me think about the nature/ nurture debate wrt the origins of psychopathy, and what it must be like to bring up a child of this sort.

Btw the "nature" aspect of personality does not automatically mean genetically inherited. When we talk about nature's influence people generally mean pre-birth. But babies are subjected to nine months of formative pre-birth life experience, some of which has been shown to determine hormonal developments such as increased stress hormones (leading to a post-birth child who is easily stressed out/ angered). Or personality developments, such as in twins, who often develop dominant/ submissive roles when vying for space in the womb, and carry this on after birth.

We simply don't know enough, but should not assume that it's all or even mostly genes.

I read the book, after I had had ds1 and ds2, think I was feeling quite fragile, because I cried for about 3 days after and ended up in counselling, think the book was the catalist for this and not really the cause!!
Anyway! I didnt read it as blaming the mother at all, I always felt that the son had been born different, and that she was left to deal with it, and was found lacking. I thought it was very sad that her ideal of motherhood had been so damaged by the reality, and that her beautiful relationship with her husband had been changed so dramatically.

That, I think, is the tragedy of the whole book. That we all think a child will enrich our relationships, but so often it changes it, and not always for the better. I have a lovely family, but sometimes I look back at my relationship pre children (we were together for 15 years before we had children) and mourn for what I lost.......I did gain a lot too, but that 1 on 1 with my partner has never been the same.

I haven't read the book, perhaps the author/film producers would be interested in why someone who reads a lot would chose not to? Being a parent is hard work and the problems are not something that you fully understand until you do it. Reading books about parenting by the childless would be like reading a book by someone blind from birth about sight. I did read the question and answer session on mumsnet and the author came across as arrogant, that also put me off reading the book. It sounds like the book is exploring the parent the author fears they would become, but none of know what sort of parent we will make until we get there.

As for the general nature/nuture debate - there are many influences on a child, not simply the mother and, apparently a lesser role in the book, the father. Without reading it I can't know how much those other influences are explored or if the author has any insight into the third and fourth major influences on a child (their school and their friends). Perhaps there was some stab at that as the murders take place at school, but as no-one has yet mentioned it clearly the author sees childrearing as a very narrow process. It generally isn't. However much this mother was supposed to be isolated it does seem the child went to school?

I'll only read the book/see the film if one of my children does.

I've read the book. Miserable, terrifying, depressing, cold, will not be watching the film.

I'm reading the Book of Human Skin - another tale with an evil boy in it, already it is a much more interesting read, gentled by other narrators. Bet that would make a good film

I thought it was amazing. I wouldn't put it on my list of "favourite" books, but I would put it on a list of books-everyone-should-read. Not because it was great literature, it wasn't, or even because of the storyline, (which was developed a trillion times better than Jodi Picoult's similar plotline in 15 Minutes) but because it made me think.

I didn't see it as an indictment of Eva having failed to bond with Kevin, possibly because I am always slightly surprised at myself and how I bonded with my child. I freely admit I don't particularly like children, I'm never going to be one of those people who gushes "I lurrrrrrve children". I don't. Some I do, some I can't stand. Same as adults. So I suppose I found it easy enough to understand why she wouldn't like her own son. Especially given what he became.

Nature or nurture though? I'd go with nurture every time. We aren't born, we are made. So was it Eva's fault? I'd say the blame would lie more clearly at the father's door. He was the one who stood in her way whenever she tried to make Kevin change. He was the pathetic lummock who refused to accept that Kevin was a wrong'un. (He'd be so at home on one of those PFB school threads....)

I wouldn't go and see a film version. I don't do films.

The ending isn't a shock. It's revealed at the beginning.

is it? I must not have noticed...............(although we know one part but not the other, the adressee of the letters?)

That was my comment I think unquietmind. I think I must have guessed earlier on because it wasn't a surprise to me. But I am the kind of annoying person who spoils books, films and TV programmes by guessing the ending so that might be why!

There was a programme on tv recently about psychopathy. A world-renowned neurologist had been studying criminals, and had, like other neuros, found brain abnormalities which were then put down to a particular gene. He then discovered that in his own family there had been a murderer, so he had himself tested for the gene. He had it.

He was NOT a psychopath. The gene had not expressed itself. The conclusion was that, like so many things - ms for one - you have to have the gene and then you have to have the environmental trigger too. No one knows what the trigger is though. I doubt very much it is as simple as not bonding, or not hugging enough.

Unquiet, I don't think she revealed the ending, but I remember that I worked it out pretty early on. It was supposed to be a grand denouement, wasn't it, that Eva was writing to her dead husband. It was no great surprise to me, and clearly not to you either. It's an indication that Shriver still has a long way to go before writing a 'great.' novel.

I think when people talk about nature vs nurture they often forget how much "nurture" we get from outside of our immediate families. It's certainly not a strict divide between "was he born like that or did she make him that way?", it's almost certainly a combination of the two plus other factors.

I didn't have the problem of not bonding with either of my children, but I know it is very sensitive for those that do. It was a huge fear of mine and I think it can be seen as a failure unfortunatly. Mothers that don't bond initially have enough guilt about it and I'm sure it doesn't help to be blamed for later behaviour in a child.

I feel guilty for so much with my children but I think that is a part of being a parent anyway. I do my best for them and what I am able to (time/money being a factor) and that is all I can do. When I was younger I looked at my mum as someone who was totally indestructible and now I realise that she made mistakes because she is just a person and was doing what she felt was best. Most people I have met have issues/hang-ups that come from their parents but I think that's unavoidable seeing as parents are human and so cannot be perfect.

I was a geneticist before I had my children and so I think genes have a large part to play in how we turn out. I can already see traits in my ds1 that are from me but there are others that I can see are him watching me and behaving accordingly. I believe basic personality traits are already there are birth but that by parenting in different ways you can make changes and help a child to make the right choices and be a good person. For example I am very short tempered at times I see it in my ds1 already but I am trying to teach him to control it better than I do. Ds2 is 13 months and has been very different from very early on but although I am the same person with the same values many aspects of our life are different now and I have learned from ds1 so am not exactly the same mother as I was and cannot totally rules those out as the reason for it.

I haven't heard of this book/film and not sure it's my kind of thing as I am more of a happy ending kind of person but it does sound interesting.

I think it all about nature versus nurture. Was he born that way or did him upbringing make him that way. There were hints of PND in there too. Can't say I particularly enjoyed it to be honest.

I enjoyed the book. Although I didn't particularly like Eva I still found her relatable in the most part, which is worrying!

Having a child changes your life, that much is obvious, but not always in the ways you expect. It changes your relationships and it changes you and sometimes the way you identify yourself and this is what Eva fought. She kicked and screamed to preserve herself and the life she loved in the face of parenthood but eventually the guilt at her unwillingness to give of herself completely won and she "gave in" to parenthood. By then, the damage had been done and she found the bond too difficult to create at this later stage.

I can recognise some aspects of this. I was a bit selfish (i.e. Not a total martyr) in order to get my figure (time away from the babies at the gym) and my career for example back on track after having children and I know that it was difficult for me to make the transition in my head to thinking of myself as a "mother". There was a part of me desperate to shout "Look, it's me! I'm still the same person! Having babies hasn't changed EVERYTHING!" but it had and it does. Some people just struggle with that more than others.

Although it is showing the extreme outcome of having no bond between a mother and son, i do feel that it highlights a growing problem with young children who have had little or no close bond with there mother (or father) having a close bond helps to give a child a better understanding of life as they grow.