[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..I'm not sure that society is any more or less 'faulty' than it ever was, though..?...


..specifically with this mother, I think that she's either very mentally ill or very evil and there have always been people like that...

I'm not even saying it's particularly new, but that's not the same as saying "always". It's been pretty much the same story since the birth of industrialisation (and resulting population boom), a few hundred years now.

There are obviously exceptions but the truth is, most "evils" are mental illness and most "mental illness" has a trigger. The huge rise in post natal depression for example can be directly correlated with increasing medicalisation of birth (process taken over by midwives or doctors, bright lights, birth stress or trauma, immediate cord clamping or cutting, baby removed from mother's arms immediately for "cleaning" etc., possibly baby even taken away to "allow mother to rest"). All of these things have psychological and hormonal knock-on effects that are sometimes drastic.

Of course, most people even under all of these circumstances still end up being passable and loving parents. But these things (and many other relatively modern societal phenomena) demonstrably DO sometimes erode the instinctual parent-child bond. and where that bond is eroded, unspeakable things like this are more likely to happen, even (or especially?) when there are other underlying issues.

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I'm not even saying it's particularly new, but that's not the same as saying "always". It's been pretty much the same story since the birth of industrialisation (and resulting population boom), a few hundred years now.

There are obviously exceptions but the truth is, most "evils" are mental illness and most "mental illness" has a trigger. The huge rise in post natal depression for example can be directly correlated with increasing medicalisation of birth (process taken over by midwives or doctors, bright lights, birth stress or trauma, immediate cord clamping or cutting, baby removed from mother's arms immediately for "cleaning" etc., possibly baby even taken away to "allow mother to rest"). All of these things have psychological and hormonal knock-on effects that are sometimes drastic.

Of course, most people even under all of these circumstances still end up being passable and loving parents. But these things (and many other relatively modern societal phenomena) demonstrably DO sometimes erode the instinctual parent-child bond. and where that bond is eroded, unspeakable things like this are more likely to happen, even (or especially?) when there are other underlying issues.

...ahh, I understand what you're saying...I haven't really done any research on things like modern birth practises and the possible effects of that being a contributing factor to things like post natal depression, which is a very serious thing and I think in general, a lot of females don't get enough help with this because maybe it can be seen as 'baby blues..' and not taken seriously enough and I do know that any medical depression is not something that people just 'get over' after a period of time....I agree with you that even the most 'evil' of people can't be of 'sound mind' and do the things they do and it's an extreme of mental illness....