If you knew nothing about Britain and went by what you read in the current headlines over here, you might very well conclude that the neglect, beating, torture and even killing of young children was as much a British tradition as high tea.
We have the recent case of the single mother whose two young boys died in a house fire that they may have inadvertently started. It is quite likely that she was too stoned out of her gourd to properly supervise them. Their mom, you see, loved to party which didn't leave much time for parenting. She was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and child neglect.
Next we have the case of the mother who drowned her four-year-old daughter because she, the "mom", was embarrassed by her cerebral palsy. Another mother killed her two sons in order to better love herself. Well, that's what she told the police. She is, obviously, currently being assessed in a mental health facility.
In 2007, a "mother" by the name of Karen Matthews organized a kidnap of her schoolgirl daughter Shannon by the uncle of her live-in partner. The live-in partner, incidentally, a lowlife by the name of Craig Meehan, was prosecuted for possessing child pornography soon after the kidnap story broke.
I'll give you just one more example, but this is the most galling and most disturbing of them all. A sixteen-month-old child, known to us only by the name Baby P, was routinely beaten and eventually killed by his mother's boyfriend and the couple's lodger. Baby P's mother now brags confidently that she'll be out of jail by Christmas. Despite the baby's horrific injuries, social workers kept accepting the mother's lies about how the toddler incurred them. A 15-year-old who lived in the house, but was too scared to come forward before now, has revealed the full horror behind the child's torment and eventual death. It makes for gut-wreching, stomach-turning reading.
What really boils my blood is that these people will not know anything approaching the terror that the infant routinely felt during his sixteen short months of life, unless they receive vigilante action by fellow inmates in prison, which I most sincerely hope they do. They certainly won't be put to death by the legal system, as they should be, as Britain abolished capital punishment in 1964.
Now, the question for you, dear reader, is this: How on earth does a mother kill her children "in order to better love herself"? How on earth can any parent think it's alright to party till the small hours when she's got two kids to look after? How does a mother fake the kidnapping of her daughter simply for attention or for greedy purposes? And how does an infant boy get treated so viciously, for so long?
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Bryan McKay
I'm really glad I had the chance to read this charming and insightful bit of social commentary. I'm just wondering, where exactly do you draw the line to begin forced sterilization? Should it be based on prior criminal record or socioeconomic status?
2 - Ruvy
Well Mark, at least you don't look like you just had 5 pints too many in this new photo.
You raise a pretty question, don't you. You wouldn't happen to be a daddy yourself would you?
3 - Dr Dreadful
Ah, Mark. This must be the article you were warning me about a few weeks ago. I thought you'd given up on it...
I can't help but think that when you refer to 'we', you're not really including yourself or like-minded people in the pronoun. But no matter - let's run with it anyway.
'We' have a responsibility to those you rail against, who whether you like it or not are human beings with identical DNA to 'us'. If 'their' antisocial lifestyles are embedded several generations deep, that's 'our' responsibility for allowing it to happen.
There's a reason why 'we' have ethical standards. 'They' set us a stern social challenge, for sure, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. But taking the easy, lazy option just so we can wash our hands of the problem makes 'us' less than human.
One last thing for now. I have noted before that your preferred source of news seems to be the Daily Mail, which despite its half-hearted pleas to the contrary is, at root, a sensationalist tabloid just like the Sun or the Star. Stories like the ones you cite grab attention and sell papers. Small wonder that it seems to you as if Britain is descending back into the Dark Ages.
I realize I'm an exile now, but I do get back there quite often and on all my trips, I've never once walked down a street on which there was a discarded baby in every trashcan.
4 - Glenn Contrarian
Doc - well said.
Mark, I think your article is a prime example of not being able to see the forest for the trees. If you stare too closely at this or that horrible incident, you lose sight of the overall wonder - which is that even counting Iraq and the ongoing genocide in the Sudan, the world as a whole is now more at peace than it ever has been in human history. I defy you to find any two-decade period in history that was more peaceful than the world has been since the end of the Cold War.
Such terrible events as you describe have always been there - if you didn't hear about them, it's because either the press wouldn't report it or the villain simply got away with it.
But looking at everything as a whole, except for the environment, humanity is now better off than ever before.
5 - zingzing
oh, mark edward manning, you of so many names, you have become that which you hate, and you don't even realize it. you're just as irresponsible (ok, maybe slightly less,) in your words as they are in their child-rearing. the reason why there are morons in the world is because we allow morons to procreate? oh my! you've hit upon it there! yay!
seriously, you're just a misanthrope without the guts to be a serial killer. almost. something like it.
6 - STM
Doc: "One last thing for now. I have noted before that your preferred source of news seems to be the Daily Mail".
Which as we all know, is the preferred newspaper of the British "peeping classes" ... those nosy middle-aged Britons who love to pull their curtains back to have a sly little peep on the street so they know exactly what's going on, and who's coming and going. Is that Manning?
Also, I just wanted to make it clear ... none of the kind of child neglect you mention happens in rural Tennessee where some of the white folks only kind of speak English, or the housing department suburbs of western Sydney where people prefer to spend their welfare cheques on heroin instead of food, is that right?
It's only confined to social-welfare-sucking, drug-and piss-addled British white/black/asian trash, right?
Don't you get that American reality show Cops on Pay-TV over in the Old Dart??
Mark, I'm still recommending a one-way ticket back to Boston for you, where you can then write stories about everything that's wrong with American society. F.ck, you'll have yer hands full with that :)
7 - STM
Lol. Daily Mail columnist with cucumber up blurter: "Britain seems to have cornered the market in welfare layabouts, drug addicts, feral gangs of obese children and hideous, drunken scrubbers, littering the gutters of even our more genteel suburbs. The women are the worst of the lot, giving birth to a procession of bay-bees by different, transient fathers and expecting " nay, being encouraged by " the state to pay for their upbringing."
Of course, none of this happens in the US :)
So if any Americans out there are thinking that's faintly familiar, don't worry - it's not happening there, only across the big pond.
Any people you see fitting that description aren't real ... they're just holograms generated by shows like America: Exposed, Uncut.
8 - Mark Edward Manning
Ruvy: "You wouldn't happen to be a daddy yourself would you?"
Well, what if I was? Are you saying that if I was a father, I'd be well within my rights to neglect my parenting duty and perhaps even to think of killing my child?
9 - Mark Edward Manning
Re: Dr. Dreadful, #3:
No, actually, the article I warned you about was published a while ago; it was the one about the British people's infantile anti-war attitude. Remember it? It's somewhat strange that I don't recall you responding to that one.
Anyway, you wrote here: "If 'their' antisocial lifestyles are embedded several generations deep, that's 'our' responsibility for allowing it to happen."
I agree completely, Doc. We did allow it to happen -- that's the whole point I made in this piece. No argument there.
But, as usual, you take umbrage at the fact that I'm not full of love, empathy and understanding for these child-abusing layabouts, and that's what I continue to find so puzzling about you (and the other predictable "oh, Manning, you're so cruel!" bleeding-hearts).
Tell me, Dr. D., were you one of these Guardianistas who railed against "Little Britain" when it first came out, arguing that it made fun of society's "most vulnerable"?
10 - Mark Edward Manning
Glenn Contrarian: " ... or the villain simply got away with it."
That's what scares me the most, Glen. They do get away with it and in ever-increasing numbers too.
I'm sorry that I don't share your huggy-buggy vision of humankind, Glenn, but I'm afraid the cold, harsh reality will always rain on that particular parade.
If humankind really is better off than at any time in the past, it won't stay that way. With the world population rising quicker than Bill Clinton's member at the sight of a young nubile White House intern, there will be massive wars over food, fuel and territory. I just hope I'm already six feet under when the real fun begins.
11 - Mark Edward Manning
Re: Stan, #'s 6 & 7:
Er, Stan, kindly point out where in this piece I wrote the following or anything resembling it: "You see, because I am American, this sort of lowlife behavior is foreign to me because these horrors just don't happen in my country."
If you can locate any sentence that even comes remotely close to that sort of assertion, then you can have a six-pack of Castlemaine XXXX and a few more corks for your hat on me.
In fact, I fully expect the sort of behavior, attitudes and actions I railed against here to become even more prevalent in my homeland thanks to the election of our new rock star of a messiah of a President for whom no non-working class home will go unredistributed.
You're right, I would very soon have my work cut out for me if I wrote about social problems back home. I don't even know where I'd begin, the stories would just pile up. Can I just say, "Streuth!"
12 - Mark Edward Manning
zingzing: See my response to Dr. Dreadful in #9. A lot of it applies to you as well.
I'm always curious to know which bleeding-hearts will crawl out of the woodwork whenever I write a strong piece such as this one, and congratulations, zz, you're one of them!
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
13 - zingzing
how are you using "strong" in that sentence? the piece (some might call it a "bit") seems to revel in the unfortunate lives of others. almost sneering. it's as exploitative, crass and judgmental as anything i've read in a while, and i just got done watching funny games a couple of days ago.
you're a national treasure there, mr. manning. "there" and only there. glad you've turned your undoubtedly gnarled-up hands towards bashing on some other culture rather than our own. truly, you are the ugly american.
why do you live in a place you so obviously despise? what culture on this planet would you actually find to your taste? what you suggest is near to the same thing that mao tried in china... just starve the poor and the "lesser" out of existence.
yes, those that beat, kidnap or kill children deserve to be in jail. but it's not like those that do those things do them because they are on welfare. that's just a stupid, sick idea. plenty of poor people are great parents, and plenty of rich people are vile assholes. you're just using a few cherry-picked examples of CHILD DEATH to prop up an argument against welfare.
fuck off. that's so damn stupid, i don't even know where to start. [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
14 - STM
I'll give him one thing, zing ... he's not afraid to say what he thinks.
Bit like yerself.
15 - STM
Mark, in Strine, that'd be: "Strewth!"
Originally short for God's truth but came to have lots of different meanings depending on context and how it was said.
We only hear it on TV these days though. Someone should bring all those old Strine words back to life before they die out completely and we lose what's left of our kulcha.
Our language is dying ... all the young kids in Oz speak with a mid-Pacific accent. A meeting of Australians and Californians somewhere halfway between us in the middle of a dirty great fucking ocean, and none of 'em speak properly.
What's happening to this world??
16 - Ruvy
Well, what if I was? Are you saying that if I was a father, I'd be well within my rights to neglect my parenting duty and perhaps even to think of killing my child?
No, Mark. Not at all. But your whole article looks at parenting from the outside - from the eyes of a person who isn't one. And it shows.
Were you a father, you would point out exactly what these folks were missing. But you'd also realize how damned hard it is not to miss certain elements of parenting - how easy it is to just put the baby down on the floor/playpen with a bottle of milk or juice in his mouth, for example, just to shut him up - only to find three years later that your actions (flooding the kids teeth with sucrose) have rotted the teeth away. If you don't have money for a bridge for the kid, he/she winds up saying "tor" for "four" or "tive" for "five" and has one bitch of a time adjusting. with everyone laughing in his face when he talks.
Then there is the harsh auestion asked already. Are you willing to force sterilization of a portion of the population you believe should die out? That is a solution, a workable one, and given the slippery slope the supposedly "civilized" west has been sliding down in matters of sexual morality and euthanasia, it would not surprise me to someone using your arguments for enforced sterilization for the "underclass" and "great unwashed". Who are you to determine in advance that genius cannot come from mediocrity or feral kids?
17 - Dr Dreadful
It's somewhat strange that I don't recall you responding to that one.
If it was published in the second half of September, Mark, I probably didn't see it as I was in Peru at the time. I'll have a rummage around the site for it and send you a rocket after I've read it!
you take umbrage at the fact that I'm not full of love, empathy and understanding for these child-abusing layabouts
Alas, I'm not Christ or any of his saints, so I don't profess universal love and kindness for all. But just because these folks have no ethics doesn't excuse you or me from having any.
Tell me, Dr. D., were you one of these Guardianistas who railed against "Little Britain" when it first came out, arguing that it made fun of society's "most vulnerable"?
I find Little Britain mildly amusing. I presume you're thinking of the 'Andy' character in particular - the one who pretends to be disabled until the second his caregiver turns his back? However, I thought Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke, as "The Slobs", did a much better and funnier job of portraying and lampooning the 'underclass'. Don't know if you lived in Britain at that time and remember those characters.
Fortunately, I am able to draw a line between humour and advocating eugenics.
18 - zingzing
what's the name of the character that goes "eh-eh-eh" and then totally destroys everything? that was some classic stuff.
the problem with that show is that they stick to the same characters doing exactly the same thing... it's almost as if it's a joke on the audience. how many times CAN you watch it before you figure it out?
and now it's on hbo. with the same damn characters.
19 - Dr Dreadful
That would be Frank Spencer, zing - one of the all-time classic TV comedy characters, portrayed by Michael Crawford on Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em.
There's one immortal scene I recall in which he finds himself on a pair of out-of-control roller skates (with Frank, everything was out of control!) and ends up trashing pretty much the entire town before careening to a halt.
What made that show - and the character - more than a one-trick pony is that despite being a catastrophic failure at just about everything he tried, he did manage to succeed as a husband (to the devoted Betty) and father.
20 - zingzing
who's frank spencer?
i was talking about little britain... the tall one dresses up like a lady, although he might be playing a man... and this person is obviously in a psyche ward somewhere. but his/her doctor doesn't seem to recognize how bad off this person is. and he/she destroys everything before stopping to pick up a telephone.
21 - Matthew T. Sussman
IQ tests for breeding might not be a horrible idea. Other than the one we have now:
1. Which hole does it go in?
2. What do you have on tap tonight?
2. I should pull out now, right, honey?
If you get a 66% on this one, you pass.
22 - Mark Edward Manning
For Bryan McKay, Ruvy, Dr. D., zinzing and all others who failed spectacularly to notice the tongue-in-cheekness of my sterilization comment, can I just say: that's all it was.
I do, of course, realize there is no sound or perhaps even moral way to render any cross-section of the population infertile. I was actually engaging in a bit of bitter, dry humor there for those of you who missed it -- and miss it you did. Can't blame you though, as it did flow effortlessly into the frustrated seam of the whole piece.
I believe it would be a very sound idea to just stop this whole stupid policy by which you receive an increase in benefits or tax breaks just for dropping a kid. That has to be one of our more bizarre policies ever (not just in the U.K., but other countries too, including the U.S.)! No wonder people -- all people -- are breeding like mad. That really needs to be ceased, IMHO.
23 - Mark Edward Manning
Stan: They complain about the same thing here in Britain, about how speech is all becoming "mid-Atlantic." I even once read in a British magazine that "because we watch American films and programmes, absorb Australian soaps, and talk to people from all over the world, our British accents are starting to lose their character."
Fair enough, I got the spelling of "strewth" wrong, but I was aware of the term's Elizabethan English roots. I'm sorry to hear that it's dying out. But, to tell you the truth, I never once heard it in all the "Skippy" episodes I've ever watched and those were produced 40 years ago!
24 - Mark Edward Manning
Matthew: Sounds like a hell of a plan to me, and your observations on the subject are dead on-target.
But still perhaps a bit too "eugenic" for most people to stomach.
25 - Dr Dreadful
Perhaps you should have labelled your title 'Satire', Mark...
Those of us who know you from your previous work have to start with the assumption that you're not kidding.
I believe it would be a very sound idea to just stop this whole stupid policy by which you receive an increase in benefits or tax breaks just for dropping a kid. That has to be one of our more bizarre policies ever (not just in the U.K., but other countries too, including the U.S.)!
I can't speak for the rest of the US, but in California it hasn't been the case since 1997 that your welfare benefits increase if you have another kid.
There are other factors at work here besides the mercenary. I have one client with five children who are ineligible in this way. If she is constantly squeezing them off in an attempt to get more government money, it's taking her quite a while to notice that it isn't working.