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Factors

A Post by Monkey Pliers
on September 18, 2013


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  I'm going to get right down to it here. Having heard about so many killings and other abuses of autistics committed by their caregivers, I think it might be time to break down the statistics. I don't have them myself. Right now, I'm just wondering if anyone at all has checked them out yet. I'm overwhelmed enough by the information I already have, so I don't expect to be able to manage this one myself. Has anyone who's been following this longer and in greater detail gotten a sense of a pattern yet?

  I've noticed that many of us who are voicing objection to throwing all the sympathy to parents when they commit filicide against their autistic kids are pointing out that, in order for parents to murder their own offspring, the cause must be that something has gone wrong within the parents, not that their child's autism somehow made them do it. If that's the case, then, of course, the next logical step is to determine what it is that's gone wrong. Given that most parents of autistics don't do this kind of violence to their children, mental instability on the part of the parents who do has been offered as a possibility.* Lack of direct social and professional supports for the parents themselves has been suggested, but it's also been noted that at least some parents have refused help for their kids when it's been available. Such parents may be even less likely to seek help for themselves - or to think there's any reason why they should. So, what's going on here? Is that the whole story? I doubt it. Some people might be very uncomfortable with the kinds of questions we might need to ask in order to sort all this out. However, if that's the case, I can only offer this as a response: People like me are dying at the hands of those they love, rely on, and should be able to trust the most. How comfortable do you suppose that is for me?

  Back to statistics. What do they show? Are things fairly even across the board? When school shooting after school shooting took place in America, people began to notice there didn't seem to be a lot of girls, of any racial or ethnic background, or kids of color, of either sex, gunning down numerous students at a time at their high schools. When it became clear that, over and over, the mass shooters were white boys, a national discussion began about white privilege and "boys crying bullets". In the process, it came to light that there was an intersection between how these kids had been taught by their culture to assume the world ought to be and which ways were acceptable for them to express themselves, if they were allowed to make their feelings known at all. Hence a handful of white boys, independently of each other, eventually publicly announced their pain grand scale by "crying automatic weapon ammo" fairly indiscriminately at large numbers of their classmates. This did not mean all white boys were violent or that the boys involved in these acts didn't have other problems. But an important pairing of factors had been uncovered. Might something similar be found if we were to examine the statistics regarding the raising of / caring for autistics and not only their murder but other acts of abuse by their various caregivers as well?

  At some point, if we want to change anything, we need to know if shame associated with having an autistic child, for example, contributes to any degree to refusal of services for any reason; confinement in order to hide the condition; denial that symptoms are not someone's fault and abusive "punishment" for associated behaviors; thinking of autism as an entity of its own and considering it in demonic, monstrous, or otherwise catastrophic terms, so as to avoid blame; fear of isolation and shunning of the family by others, leading to a sense of loss, loneliness, and and hopelessness; and the belief that the family ought to be strong enough to go it alone and that there's no future at all if this cannot be accomplished, just to list some of the types of thinking that may be involved.

  Now, anybody can feel shame. It's an emotion with the potential to be experienced universally, no matter who people are. But is everyone experiencing shame in connection with autism equally? Or are there cultural influences involved? In order to do anything about it, we need to understand the source of the shame; we can't just tell people not to feel it. If the shame is pretty evenly spread, we need one kind of approach. But we may need another if cultural variation is making a difference in how people feel, what they fear, and what they think they are allowed or obligated to do about it.

  Because I don't have the statistics, please forgive me for having to make up a few examples, in order to illustrate the point. I apologize, in advance, if I express any stereotypes that might cause offense. This is, most definitely, not my intention. Furthermore, because I'm inventing these examples, please bear in mind that they have nothing whatsoever to do with what might actually be turned up in the evidence. That being said, let's suppose, for now, that, in reviewing all the known instances of murder of autistics by their parents that have taken place so far in America, we found that comparatively very few or none had been committed by Hispanic parents. Suppose it was also determined, upon further research and examination, that autism was less stigmatized in Hispanic American culture and that there was greater concern for protecting autistics and their families from racism than for attempting to prevent or cure autism. Suppose we found Japanese Americans were also far less likely to put their autistic offspring to death, if they ever did at all. And suppose it were determined that something about the cultural view of the meaning and responsibilities of having a family, regardless of the challenges of the children, took precedence over any shame about a child's condition, even if a high degree of shame was felt. Consequently, whatever else went on, killing an autistic child never even occurred to the parents as an option.

  Now let's suppose the overwhelming majority of autistic victims of filicide came from white families. Then we might ask if being in a privileged majority intensifies fear of difference and of rejection for being different to such a degree that the risk that there might be violent action taken to hide or correct a perceived flaw might be significantly increased. We might further consider whether or not a sense of entitlement to what is considered a "normal" life results in some parents' sense that a kind of "right" has been violated by the birth of their "abnormal" child. We might also wonder if white parents find it harder to give care of their kids over to others when they realize they can't handle things themselves or if there's less of a chance they'll be willing to admit to themselves that they can't handle things, because that would represent a loss of face they find unacceptable as members of a powerful class of people. We might contemplate comparing the degree to which white parents might be possessive of their children or inclined to assume they're a kind of property and whether or not that makes a difference in these cases. We might also think about whether white parents are more likely to expect sympathy from the general public once their "plight" is known, if they demonstrate the level of their distress by taking such drastic action. Might they be more inclined to believe they'll be forgiven if they can claim it's not their fault and everyone should just look what they've been driven to?

  And that's not the end of it. Some things are all about power and the expectations that accompany it, while others are about the ways in which privilege and nonprivilege intertwine. If more fathers are committing these crimes, we might imagine the possibility that finding themselves unable to manage difficulties threatens their sense of themselves as men. But if more mothers are involved, we might inquire as to whether or not women experience a greater demand that they "do it all" and handle everything themselves (that they be "superwomen" or "supermoms"), even - or especially - if they're single parents, lest they be considered failures as mothers. Are white women particularly anxious about the slings and arrows of "mother blaming", because they feel a greater expectation that they should be able to conform to the mainstream view of perfection? Do they experience more acute despair at nonconformity, being more willing to embrace the dominant cultural model, deeming themselves otherwise capable of being successful at it and finding it a relief to blame the fact that they're falling short upon their children's autism? Does the knowledge that not being white means never being able to measure up to this country's popular image of acceptability help inoculate American women of color against at least some of this pressure and increase the likelihood that they'll try to buck a system that's built to oppress them for racial/ethnic reasons anyway? As a result, are their children better protected?

There's a lot we need to learn. What makes a member of a group more likely to kill may be different from what makes someone likely to abuse without killing, and how abuse plays out may also differ based on cultural factors. Or maybe not. But we'll never find out unless we open our eyes and make a meaningful search of the data. It's not as though not enough has happened yet to reveal anything. So, let's examine the matter more closely and be honest about what we find. Life, and quality of life, are at stake here. We have to know.


  * For a short Science Daily article on what's been learned about filicide in general, please read: How Do Filicide Offenders Differ From Other Murderers?


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