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

I did enjoy reading this book, although the ending and what happens to his sister was not a big suprise. I did think that it was a nuture/nature debate in the book, I had not read it before I had children and maybe would have read it differently if I had, but it seemed to me that she had decided Kevin was bad right from the start. I would have liked to see the story from the father's point of view too.

When I was pg and while breastfeeding I read 'Mother Nature' by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. It's a scientific/biological analysis of motherhood (that summary is of course too concise). Well worth a read if you want to understand how the social and cultural constructs of being a mother relate to our actual primal instincts. It was a real education for me and kind of shifted motherhood as a concept sideways, IYSWIM, so that I didn't focus too much on the soft-focus baby powdered stuff of legend. It helped me as a single mother (homeless, no support network) because I was expecting PND and was trying to pre-empt at least the psychological triggers if not the hormonal ones.

That's my preamble to saying I didn't read the book because I kind of felt I'd considered all the issues already, myself, privately (I know what it's about, and what happens, and about the characters - read everything about it but not the book itself - I'm not a big reader of fiction anyway TBH).

In the event I bonded well with my son but worry a lot about his future WRT the nature vs nurture debate. Am I doing enough to ensure that he matures into A Good And Well-Adjusted Citizen? Given that we all on MN could criticize our own parents for the mistakes they made in raising us - some of them quite horrifying - what will our kids be saying about us in thirty years time?

I'm already facing the nature vs nurture debate, DS has had communication and behavioural problems at school, I've already experienced teachers and peers eyeing me with suspicion, what makes that boy the way he is, it must be her...

I can't say for certain it's not. I hope it isn't and I don't think it is, and I say that with eyes wide open. But how can I be sure? Some of us here on MN will end up the mothers of criminals, some the mothers of serious criminals.

I've not read the book, but probably will now that I know what it's about. I don't think bonding is a natural, well maybe not bonding the instance you are handed this litte pink thing.

My first and foremost thought when I had DD was "what now?" it wasn't until a couple of days later when she was really ill and I was sitting in the corridor of the SCBU waiting for them to see her, did I realise that I would risk life and limb to protect her and how much I loved her.

I don't like the way many health and social services professionals, academics and so on talk about 'bonding'. Seems rather reductive. You can't just boil the enormous, profound experience of motherhood into a 'did they bond' tick box.

Wasn't attachment theory originally based on Romanian orphanages - i.e. said very little about the experience of ordinary children who have parents who are at least vaguely well-intentioned?

I think mothers not bonding with children is an issue worthy of exploration but not from the sensationalist perspective.

Looking at any issue through the prism of monstrosity makes any sensitive analysis of the subject impossible. It tends to make the failure to bond with your child appear monstrous rather than mundane and distracts from the fact that this is not uncommon but is something people feel they cannot mention or get support for.

I haven't read the book but have strong opinions of the subject. When my oldest child (my son) was born I did not bond with him for a long time. I felt responsible for him and wanted him to be happy but I did not feel love the way that I do for my husband or other family members. He was over a year old when I genuinely felt deep love for him and this really troubled me as I felt that I must be a bad mother not to feel love at first sight. His first year is a blur and I felt like I'd made the biggest mistake in the world for both of us.

Having talked to others online I realise that most mums don't feel love at first sight and that it's a movie myth.

GooseyLoosey, I think I almost luff you. That post deserves to be framed and posted prominently and largely in every branch of Mothercare, every baby clinic and every m&t group wall.

I have always wondered how the parents of people who commit murder or other such terrible crimes feel. Whether you would still love your child, would you do all you could to protect them from the consequences of thier actions. I think i would find this book and film very unsettling - im not sure I want to read it or watch the film.

my DD was born by emcs as her heart rate dropped, i wasn't shown her after she cut out, she was immediately taken away and i didnt get to see her for four hours, she was on a ventilator and looked like she may not have made it through the night.

i felt guilty for this. i felt that if i hadnt wanted a baby so badly then i wount never have got pregnant and this wee bundle would never have had to go through all that stuff. even when we got her home i would just cry and cry that it was somehow all my fault.

i never got to hold her for over a week after she was born, and i felt that may have affected our bonding. there were days just sitting looking at her in her incubator and i wouldnt speak to her.

but then we got her home, and there were the times that i would cry due to exhaustion and then feel so bad, as that night she was born i would have done anything to know i was going to get the chance to experience sleepless nights due to a baby.

i do think now we have bonded, but i still have the guilt and worry if im going to compensate for that somehow during her upbrining...

PosiesOfPoison I found your reference to the bonding 'slipping' re-assuring, I struggled to bond with him as a newborn and still 7 years later every so often I feel a chasm open up between us which I am always quick to close.
I often joke with my DH that if we ever broke up I know who my DS would choose to live with. I hope I never have to find out!

I found the book fascinating, and am going to see the film tonight so can't comment on that yet.

In general I find Lionel Shriver interesting when she writes (in other books and columns) about motherhood and children and making a choice not to have children in our society. I agree with the posters who say "where's the father in all this", I get very tired of children's problems being bounced back to the mother, even if as in this book there's deliberate consideration of it not being the mother's fault, it's still primarily investigating the mother-child relationship in what seems to be a vacuum.

I don't really like talk about bonding or maternal guilt at all, I think it puts far too much pressure on women, and too much assumption about it being their fault if their children don't turn out 'right'.

I also agree with some of the other posters that maternal ambivalence is not new in literature. Lots of old novels deal with this. Mme Bovary wasn't that dedicated a mother, if I remember correctly. Therese Desqueyroux wasn't keen on her baby either.

Hated the book.really but i am open minded about movie i like Lynne Ramsay work,so maybe she can polish a turd

i found ls writing style clunky and the ending obvious and saw it coming long time prior to end. didnt really warm to any of the characters eva,or kevin et al.nor to the unfolding story or character developments.

however maybe a good author and strong cast can transform this

Firstly, let me put in the disclaimer that I LOVE this book - I read it before I had my DD and have read it again since. What really intrigued me about the whole thing was trying to get to the truth of it. Much as I warmed to Eva and her dry humour, I was always asking myself if her version / memory of events was accurate. I've not seen the film yet, but I'm a bit concerned that if we 'see' the events she retells, will it be clear that these are her memories and not necessarily the entire truth. If you see what I mean

As a PND sufferer myself, I can fully empathise with bonding issues. I have also met some thoroughly unpleasant people in my life, and have wondered how their mothers managed to see beyond that to love them! My DD is everything I had hoped for and so much more, but surely some parents are not that lucky and simply end up with children they can't relate to or even, ultimately, like?

Thanks for linking the video clip. Helpfully the comments below told me the end so I never have to go further than the 100 crap pages I read of the book

From this discussion, just what is 'bonding' anyways?

Haven't read the book, but am interested in the whole mother/son bonding thing.

I had bad PND after DS1 (now 12). He was a difficult birth, and a sleepless demanding baby. On more than one occasion I sobbed to DH that I wanted someone to 'take him away' - at least for a little while, to give me some peace . There was no instant bonding, and I am ashamed to say that at times I felt something close to resentment for this baby who had 'ruined' my life...
But the bonding came - much later- as he grew up, and at 12, he is now something of a 'soulmate' - we think, laugh, feel all the same things at times.
Meanwhile DS2 was a 'perfect baby' - and after the trauma of DS1 I tried to 'do it differently' - kept him close, dreamfed him, co-slept, used a sling, gave up working fulltime to be with him. At 9 he is now difficult and demanding, selfish and at times difficult to like. The 'bond' that there was in infancy seems to have been replaced by a strong, defiant personality.

So what am I saying? Just that the 'bonding thing' is complex. It may be fast or slow. It may change over time. It may not happen at all.

I always feel sorry for the mothers of brutal criminals though - what must it be like to live with the knowledge that you gave birth someone who has the capacity to kill and hurt?

I read this while in labour with dd. Didn't get around to finishing it.
As a seperate issue, I have really struggled to bond with dd. Feel an enormous amount of guilt for this. It feels as though I am not normal and any effect my relationship has on my daughter is my fault.
But I can see that although I feel the mum had issues with pnd, lack if support network etc, this couldn't account for Kevin's actions.
Which demonstrates to me that there is a mix if nature and nurture in each if us.

I really liked the book. Well, in so far as one can 'like' a book about genocide. I find Shriver personally objectionable, in so far as I'm aware of her, because she comes across as wanky and pretentious in interviews, and because she's a member of an organisation which attacks parents who have unplanned pregnancies (i.e. me), which I think is unpleasant and inhumane, but she is an impressive writer imo. I only saw the film last night, went with someone who hadn't read the book (doesn't read many books, bloody men), and that was interesting for me because from some of the reviews I'd read I was worried the film would be less ambivalent about the 'causation of evil' issue than the book was. It wasn't.

The main thing I liked about the book, though, and I am certain because of her other characteristics that it was unintentional, was the way that it portrayed a rich, able family as a source of evil and dysfunction, when currently the fashion is to blame the 'poor and feckless' for any societal dysfunction. I liked that it was made clear that dysfunctional and frankly shitty parents are just as (if not more) likely to come from the upper-class and aspirational yuppy types who have children 'to complete their life' or whatever shit they say, rather than the poorfeckless who may have children randomly but actually often have a desperate aching need for a family and thus do provide the love necessary, albeit that 'we can't afford children' and thus need 'taxpayers money' as support for our childraising role. Of course I know that there are some poor people who are shit parents too, but current ideology glosses over this in favour of blaming those who 'can't afford the children they have' (Vernon Dursley Conservatism :D) for everything without noting that the posh are just as bad, if not worse considering that they don't have the excuse of life stressors and poor family histories themselves. Having said that, I didn't fine Eva an unsympathetic character at all. I think that's part of what's brilliant about the book- one is forced to empathise with the characters who are painted as 'pure evil' (Kevin more so, obviously, than Eva, but that's one of the fun twists; that it becomes clear gradually that you're seeing everything from her biased/twisted perspective and that actually she is not this great mother who by some terrible fate got an awful child, but is complicit in it all), which is a great gift to be given in a time when black-and-white morality is imposed so strenuously.

I don't think I'd have been so impressed by just the film, and I did find it slow in places (though blah blah disclaimer that I am a child of the 'digital age' or something so expect things to be constant explosions and car chases), and think it maybe glossed over some of Eva's own badness though to be fair it's harder to present the story properly in that medium because you can't have the gradual revelation that you get in the book.

Holy crap I am a pretentious wanker. Just thought I'd get that in before anyone else did.

Finally finished my previous book so I can now start reading this.

Marking so I remember to come back :)

I read the book but I didn't take it seriously as a real to life theme. The ending horrified me though and there is no way on earth I would want to see the film (I might have done when younger and not a mum!).

I found it interesting that Shriver chose not to have children herself. I assume she feared bonding might not come easily to her, and the book is the worst case scenario.
There's a lot of pressure on women to reproduce; the mother in WNTTAK was not exactly keen to bring a child into her life, but felt it was the expected thing.

WNTTAK made me think about how parents tend to pigeon-hole their own kids, and how damaging that can be.

I saw the film last night. Gruelling. I really wish I hadn't gone. Mesmerising in a horrible way.

The motherhood focus does rather ignore Eva's relationship with Celia, it's all about her and Kevin.

vincenta I mean this most sincerely, I think it's amazing that you had a great childhood, how utterly wonderful and it can be argued that your upbringing had a significant influence of you, as a mother now.

But some people aren't so lucky. My mother was never there. My father died when I was 4. My childhood, not so great.There is a scant tenuous bond between us even now. Was that because maybe she found it difficult to bond? Possibly, I've never had the conversation with her. But my upbringing made both myself and my sister adamant we would not treat our children as we were treated. As it happens, my sister is Mother Earth personified, had her children young, bonded immediately, a natural mother in every sense. Personally, I didn't have DS till I was 38 and just simply, never felt this "rush of love" for him. There was a physical bond but not an emotional one and I still struggle to this day. Was that because of my childhood? I've analysed this to death and can't reconcile anything being as my sister is the opposite.

So, in a nutshell, I have no idea and have lost the plot somewhat! Nature v Nurture- no idea

I can understand though, another mother saying they can't understand why some mothers don't bond.