I read this long essay from start to finish in a rapt state of attention. I found it to be the most penetrating writing I’ve read so far on the cultural chasm we now inhabit. What a triumph of cogitation. The honesty and self examination is radical. You leave nothing on the cutting room table, you give us all your divagations with clarity. I wish so much that other writing was like this, but most of what passes for insight is more like barking at other dogs to me. Thank you for this, I’ll be reading more of you
"Would I cite statistics of how often parents kill their kids, and how fathers do it more frequently than mothers?"
Is it true that fathers kill their kids more frequently than mothers? I thought that mothers were more likely to kill young children and fathers more likely to kill older ones, but that either way it's not a significant difference. I'm not finding statistics easily on the Internet.
"These men are each responsible for a lot more death than Casey Anthony, but they got a lot less publicity. I can’t verify the reason for that, but I imagine it has something to do with how our culture jumps at every chance to portray women as hysterical freaks who can’t be trusted."
I think, no matter who actually kills their kids more, it is more offensive to our cultural sensibility when a mother does it, and therefore not as newsworthy when a father does it. Apparently o some level (consistent with your essay), we expect that fathers will kill their children and reserve our surprise for when we see a father taking his kids grocery shopping. I do think the Casey Anthony case is pretty singular for a lot of reasons, and maybe one of them is that she was a mother and not a father, but there was a lot more going on there.
I thought, before I wrote the essay, that I'd emphasize more how fathers predominate when it comes to committing filicides, but what I found was that while they do commit those crimes more often than women it's not by all that much. It's not 90/10 or even 80/20. So I didn't want to make too much of that; I'm more concerned about fathers because that's what I am. You're right about Casey Anthony--there's also Susan Smith, a mother who drowned her two kids and said a Black man had killed them. Cornelius Eady wrote a book of poems about that, I think.
I didn't know the details of the Susan Smith story, but I do remember it being the basis of a joke in an episode of Arrested Development.
I'm interested in the different ways the stories about mothers and fathers are treated but I have two young kids and as I read about the examples I keep spinning out a little bit.
I read this long essay from start to finish in a rapt state of attention. I found it to be the most penetrating writing I’ve read so far on the cultural chasm we now inhabit. What a triumph of cogitation. The honesty and self examination is radical. You leave nothing on the cutting room table, you give us all your divagations with clarity. I wish so much that other writing was like this, but most of what passes for insight is more like barking at other dogs to me. Thank you for this, I’ll be reading more of you
Absolutely killer essay! KC writers just do it better we are like 19th century Russians in that way.
This is perfect, dragged me in, and I want more. I hope I can make justice to it when we record this week's podcast.
"Would I cite statistics of how often parents kill their kids, and how fathers do it more frequently than mothers?"
Is it true that fathers kill their kids more frequently than mothers? I thought that mothers were more likely to kill young children and fathers more likely to kill older ones, but that either way it's not a significant difference. I'm not finding statistics easily on the Internet.
"These men are each responsible for a lot more death than Casey Anthony, but they got a lot less publicity. I can’t verify the reason for that, but I imagine it has something to do with how our culture jumps at every chance to portray women as hysterical freaks who can’t be trusted."
I think, no matter who actually kills their kids more, it is more offensive to our cultural sensibility when a mother does it, and therefore not as newsworthy when a father does it. Apparently o some level (consistent with your essay), we expect that fathers will kill their children and reserve our surprise for when we see a father taking his kids grocery shopping. I do think the Casey Anthony case is pretty singular for a lot of reasons, and maybe one of them is that she was a mother and not a father, but there was a lot more going on there.
I thought, before I wrote the essay, that I'd emphasize more how fathers predominate when it comes to committing filicides, but what I found was that while they do commit those crimes more often than women it's not by all that much. It's not 90/10 or even 80/20. So I didn't want to make too much of that; I'm more concerned about fathers because that's what I am. You're right about Casey Anthony--there's also Susan Smith, a mother who drowned her two kids and said a Black man had killed them. Cornelius Eady wrote a book of poems about that, I think.
I didn't know the details of the Susan Smith story, but I do remember it being the basis of a joke in an episode of Arrested Development.
I'm interested in the different ways the stories about mothers and fathers are treated but I have two young kids and as I read about the examples I keep spinning out a little bit.