Meet the Parents: A Special Sort of Evil

The world isn’t overpopulated.
It’s overpopulated with people who can’t raise one or multiple children with the adequate care and attention needed.

The Extreme Cases

War, genocide, murder, rape, torture, paedophilia, corruption and many more words can be used to describe some of the worst horrors carried out by people to other people.
Actual horrors. All human beings like you and I – in physical structure anyway.

Rarely have I ever seen anything in the news about what causes any of the evil inflicted by some people on to others, whether on a personal basis or towards millions. Without knowing the cause, it’s mighty difficult to solve the problems to learn or advance.

Well…
Let’s meet the parents.

And this is where people’s hackles go up and they assume that everything any one individual does is their responsibility and theirs alone. That’s true to some degree yes. You do the crime you do the time – if caught. Because actions have consequences, something a person whose mind is not impaired knows at a certain level of maturity.

So how in the hell do parents get away with creating monsters?

I fully believe from everything I’ve seen, experienced and read that monsters are created, they’re not inevitabilities.
There can be a very miniscule percentage of monsters who were born with genetic defects or something similar which can explain their actions on some level, but there’s no escaping the responsibility of parents (key caregivers) in creating the worst humans to draw breath on this planet.

Again, at this point, people will generally get annoyed and say you can’t blame the parents, you can’t scapegoat them. Well you can. And let’s start doing it.
Because awful parents are a blight on society everywhere. The fact that the biggest source of suffering comes from bad parents, is, if you think on it, undeniable.

For some reason there’s a cultural obsession with serial killers, so let’s use that as a jump off point.

There has never been a serial killer that came from a home with good enough parents, and I use the D.W. Winnicot phrase good enough, because parents don’t have to be super heroes, they just need to provide the basics: love, attention, shelter, protection and food. In essence caring for and nurturing their child(ren).

I’ve seen debates on serial killer X and how they came from a good home and therefore there was nothing to suggest the parents have done anything wrong.
That’s just nonsense, absolute rubbish. No kid from a home receiving good enough parenting goes on to be a multiple murderer. It simply doesn’t happen. Every infamous killer I’ve ever read about came from a fucked up home beyond our comprehension, without exception. However, for some reason, there are people out there who cannot conceive that parents could be responsible for creating misery packaged in a human body. Despite the fact it happens day in night out.

To take a reasonably tame example, Donald ‘I’m just terrific’ Trump was raised like a hyper competitive wolf within his own family, everyone else was a rival to be eliminated, beaten or dominated. That’s why he is the way he is. It doesn’t take much thought to get there with some brief reading of his childhood and some excerpts from memoirs.

Of course parents of monstrosities entirely deny any role as well.
So let’s not give people any credit whatsoever just because they did the extremely basic act of having ex with someone. Let’s get over the parent worship bullshit.

How Do You Want Your Abuse? Emotional or Physical?

Let’s get away from the extreme end of abuse that creates mass murderers.
And into the every day brand of parental abuse of children. The kind that silently, privately, destroys lives, but rarely ever gets the attention it deserves, or even gets noticed.

Stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me
The playground catchphrase gets it horribly wrong.
Words are incredibly damaging. Especially to a young mind that lacks any defence whatsoever.
As if it wasn’t obvious, emotional abuse by one or both parents is horrendously damaging at the time, but more importantly well into the lives of children with rakes of data to prove it, notably, the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, one of the most significant psychology studies ever conducted without exaggeration.

The ACE study highlighted that damage inflicted from emotional abuse is often worse than physical abuse.
Surviving verbal abuse, bullying, controlling behaviour, emotional regulation, gaslighting, neglect and many more have such severe implications on a child’s future prospects it’s utterly disturbing.
Because surprise surprise, babies, infants and young children require certain elements in their life to allow them to develop into functional adults. That’s no secret, never has been.
Ignorant or stupid people will raise the tiresome nature vs nurture debate. You’re having a laugh. It’s clearly nurture by light years and anyone telling you otherwise has an agenda or doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

When abuse is thought of, physical abuse is often the one that springs to mind.
Obviously it can have severe ramifications for a child. To be physically abused by the very person or persons that gave birth to you, people that should be the greatest protectors any kid has, is such a twisted and evil start to life it really needs to be treated with the severity that it deserves.
Learning that violence means dominance and control is a terrible lesson for any person to be exposed to. Learning that physical punishment is a corrective method and acceptable, is equally dire.
Lastly, any person who physically abuses a child is simply beyond evil. Given the power dynamics, it’s abhorrent. (Of course, the same applies to emotional abusers, and there are severe emotional issues resulting from physical abuse too)

What if you get both types of abuse?
The cruelty of abusive events aren’t left in time, moments just to be gotten over.
Emotional and physical abuse combined are a recipe for life long damage to such a degree, that the fact parents are not more rigorously judged is scandalous.
Parents or a parent can reduce their child to suicide at one end of the scale or create some of the worst people ever to walk the earth on the other, and either way, society pays a massive toll for terrible parents.
In terms of health outcomes and future prospects, those who suffer extended abuse in their ‘home’ get punished even harder in one of the most preventable double-whammy’s.
Growing up with the worst types of parents, is the most severe handicap a child can have anywhere on this planet regardless of other variables, that they’ll carry with them into old age if they are unable to escape the situation or receive help.

People generally fail to use logic or reason on these topics.
It’s emotional, I get it. But people that can’t separate emotion from logic are rarely worth listening to.
The classic, I got beaten by my dad every day and I turned out just fine, argument is usually one I see frequently.
They didn’t.
They’re not fine. If someone grew up and got a job, that’s not exactly a metric of success.
Sadly, a lot of people who suffer abuse from parents are very protective of their parents image which shows they haven’t escaped their clutches and the parents still have unreasonable power over them deep into adulthood such is the power of conditioning. It’s Stockholm syndrome. Abusive parents reduce a child’s self worth to such an extent it’s often difficult to escape the abuser.

For the fortunate child, there are variables in any one persons life that may save them, most notably positive influences from outside the home: a friend, other relatives, a teacher, coach.
Those children are the outliers and rely on an external force to escape abuse that should never have occurred.
But they shouldn’t be.

The levels of parental abuse is rampant and the biggest hindrance to a better society.
Unfortunately people often think of abuse as getting a few smacks, as if it stops there, but there are many variables and subtleties. Physical abuse is very real and easy to distinguish as having happened. Emotional abuse is far easier to misunderstand and leaves no visible marks, it’s pernicious, and it sticks.
Overfeeding a kid is abuse. Spoiling a kid is abuse. Telling them they’re super special is a kind of abuse. There are many many different ways abuse manifests, a multitude of which are not ones people would think of.

Have a think on this: most of things you don’t like about the world, are the direct result of terrible parents.

Parental Responsibility

When did this stop being a thing?!

Every thing a parent does, says, or doesn’t do will have an effect on their child(s) life.
It’s so fucking obvious and yet it is rarely if ever mentioned in media or discussed. I can only think this is due to cowardly, shitty parents desperate not to look bad, denial, and some parents terrified that they’ve damaged their kid(s) so looking in the mirror is a step way too far for their fragile egos.
There are also people who to this day operate in the circle of eugenics, that wrongly believe that genetics determines everything. Oh yeah, that word might conjured associations with WWII, but it existed before it and sure as hell does now too, a tragedy in itself. Another stark reality of perverse ideology.

What are parents doing?
Teaching a child some principles should be an absolute basic yet isn’t.
Monumental things, like morality, ethics, how to treat others, sex education, what not to do, what to do.
Of course, sadly it stands to reason if a parent(s) abuses their child those elements can’t be expected to be passed on.
And having had terrible parents does not excuse bad parents.

Children are not toys.
They’re the greatest responsibility any person can ever have in their life, who deserve at an absolute minimum caring parents, or in this age of divorce, at least one that cares about them.
But parents are rarely ever vilified…anywhere! They should be. Frequently. But they’re not even a discussion point when you hear about some human inflicted atrocity.

Parents seem to have some sort of god-like power just because they had sex and a baby came out.
It’s an absolute illusion that needs to be shattered. Parents are not super human beings worthy of worship, protection and idolisation. If someone wants that they have to fucking earn that.

Remember, no child chose to be born.
Yet we operate in a society (‘western’) that castigates the actions of someone, but rarely ever looks at the cause, and the blame lies at the feet of key caregivers without exception. Kid A didn’t go and shoot up a school because things were going so great with his family they figured they’d spice things up. The same goes for any other example. And that is just the extreme examples you hear of in the news.
Most abused children thankfully never do such horrific things, but the underlying damage and repercussions from disgusting piece of shit parents is life lasting, it’s the cancer nobody wants to look at, and it’s everywhere.
With any semblance of being able to read other people, you’ve known people that you knew on some level had had a horrible past not of their own creation.

But, but...Raising children isn’t easy.
That’s another classic line, used as some sort excuse for being a terrible parent.
For starters, parents that don’t even think out if they are capable of being parents are typically terrible parents. If they have fuck all insight into themselves, let alone anything else, how good can that scenario ever be?
But hearing parents bemoan the fact they have children? That makes me incredibly angry. The lack of taking ownership of bringing a kid into the world is despicable, let alone transferring guilt on to them.

And here’s the real kicker.
The conditioning we receive from birth (actually in utero too but that’s more than I can get into now) onwards determines how we will be as adults in terms of character, personality, actions, health and wealth.
Character is an interesting word isn’t it? Because not many people talk of people based on their character, of who they are and what they represent. Certainly, the public sphere seems to be teeming with amoral, narcissistic, unethical turds, but the outcome seems to be about what these people achieve rather than their character.

Just as mental illness has thankfully finally been discussed in the media – it’s about time terrible parents were held to some degree of account for the toll they charge on society and the ones they abuse.

There is no hell. But if there was such a place, the hottest room would be reserved for abusive parents, a particular kind of evil no person deserves or wants.