- Why Fathers Kill Their Kids
- By Opinion
- The Australian
- 18/09/2003 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: admin ( 75 articles in 2003 )
Understanding Why Fathers Kill Their Kids
The setting was idyllic - semi-rural Wilberforce, in northwest Sydney - but the crime was incomprehensible: the murder of two small children, and their grandfather, by the children's own father.
However much we analyse the motives of murderers, it is hard to find any explanation of how a father could kill his own children. Or a mother, for that matter, although studies of post-natal depression offer some rationale when that happens.
Fortunately, this is an infrequent tragedy, although it is sad and bad enough that there were 270 child homicide cases in Australia between 1989 and 1999, which took the lives of 316 children under 15.
Family psychologists advise the importance of detecting signs of depression and stress before it is too late. They emphasise the dangers implicit in a failed relationship, including estrangement and fights about access and custody of children.
But no amount of explanation can make the death of children by a parent's hand anything other the foulest obscenity. There is nothing that excuses or explains the British case, reported in The Australian today, where a father gassed his four sons and himself in a car - while describing the deaths of her boys to his estranged wife by mobile phone.
Or that can account for the actions of the Brisbane man now charged with the murder of three of his children earlier this month.
In the Wilberforce murders, the father of the young children had not only previously threatened to kill them, but had also been prevented from seeing them for more than two years.
But it is easy - far too easy - to blame the authorities. Predicting or preventing violence by parents against their children is enormously difficult. The natural instinct of parents is to do whatever it takes to protect their children. Fathers who kill are far beyond community comprehension.
What this tragic case shows is that parents, generally men, who lack the emotional resources to deal with a failed relationship will very occasionally respond with brutal, senseless violence.
The setting was idyllic - semi-rural Wilberforce, in northwest Sydney - but the crime was incomprehensible: the murder of two small children, and their grandfather, by the children's own father.
However much we analyse the motives of murderers, it is hard to find any explanation of how a father could kill his own children. Or a mother, for that matter, although studies of post-natal depression offer some rationale when that happens.
Fortunately, this is an infrequent tragedy, although it is sad and bad enough that there were 270 child homicide cases in Australia between 1989 and 1999, which took the lives of 316 children under 15.
Family psychologists advise the importance of detecting signs of depression and stress before it is too late. They emphasise the dangers implicit in a failed relationship, including estrangement and fights about access and custody of children.
But no amount of explanation can make the death of children by a parent's hand anything other the foulest obscenity. There is nothing that excuses or explains the British case, reported in The Australian today, where a father gassed his four sons and himself in a car - while describing the deaths of her boys to his estranged wife by mobile phone.
Or that can account for the actions of the Brisbane man now charged with the murder of three of his children earlier this month.
In the Wilberforce murders, the father of the young children had not only previously threatened to kill them, but had also been prevented from seeing them for more than two years.
But it is easy - far too easy - to blame the authorities. Predicting or preventing violence by parents against their children is enormously difficult. The natural instinct of parents is to do whatever it takes to protect their children. Fathers who kill are far beyond community comprehension.
What this tragic case shows is that parents, generally men, who lack the emotional resources to deal with a failed relationship will very occasionally respond with brutal, senseless violence.
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