The news story Why Japan’s isolated mothers are killing their children (The Age [Australia], 11/8/08) has so many outrageously revealing quotes about the pro-mother/anti-father bias that it’s hard to know where to begin.
Quote #1–”[Y]oung mothers feel acutely isolated from their community and receive no support from uninvolved or abusive husbands…In a moment of quiet desperation, they are driven to kill.”
“Driven to kill”–because of an “uninvolved” husband!?
Quote #2–”[B]ecause mothers of this generation have enjoyed greater academic and professional opportunities than their own mothers, they also suffer more depression and stress when confined to the family home.”
“Confined to the family home”? How is their choice to have kids and remain home with them “confinement”? I bet we all know who’s fault it is though…
Quote #3–”Women have become responsible not only for the full-time parenting and care of their children, but also their educational performance. The pressure is immense,” Professor Ohinata says. “That’s why, in recent cases of filicide, women haven’t just been killing infants but also schoolchildren, including teenagers.”
Your 15-year-old does poorly in school so it’s understandable to kill him?
An unbelievable double standard–a man who murdered his child would receive not an iota of sympathy or understanding or rationalization of his motives.
I would add for the “it’s always all the feminists’ fault” contingent that Japan is a relatively traditional society and hardly one where feminists have the kind of influence over family law and domestic violence policies that they do in the US. This isn’t the anti-male bigotry of feminism as much as it’s the anti-male bigotry of traditional chivalry.
The full story is here. Also note the father who was conned & guilted into blaming himself for his 3-month-old son’s murder at the hands of his wife.
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I just wonder at times if it’s embedded in the race that we don’t want to hold women accountable for actions like this. Maybe it’s just genetic or something? I otherwise find it hard to fathom.
I think people just don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions – it’s always someone else’s fault…
I would like to ask Scott Kirwin if he has any thoughts on this post ?
This is very interesting. Also note that Japan is not having enough children to maintain it’s population. I wish I knew more about modern culture there but I bet what this article discusses is part of that phenomenon.
It is bizarre that once a society gets affluent (money, sex, MTV) it starts getting comfortable with the intentional killing of its young.
In the olden days, life was so miserable you had to give birth to 6 kids, in hopes that 3 would survive childhood illnesses.
HB
McK has some real problems with Mr. Sacks. Like he is always no more than 42 % accurate. This post seems to follow the same pattern.
Suicide and in this case, materal filicide, involves the darkest regions of the human soul. The japanese culture has a totally different approach to these matters for those that would chose to get on the learning curve.
Even the "Also note the father who was conned & guilted into blaming himself for his 3-month-old son’s murder at the hands of his wife." is not spared in this melodrama.
Glenn’s problem is that he extrapolates and de-culturates the very words of Masami Ohinata, the developmental psychologist at Tokyo’s Keisen University and he uses each of the three quotations to refute Masami Sensei to support Glenn’s private conclusions.
i.e. the father who was conned & guilted into blaming himself for his 3-month-old son’s murder at the hands of his wife.
The bottom line is that Glenn Sacks has totally failed to understand Masami Ohinata and the cultural milieu from which he lives and teaches and he errantly cherry picks Masami in quotations totally out of context to self-serve Sacks personal agenda.
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Oops, I forgot to quote these special words from Mr. Sacks:
"This isn’t the anti-male bigotry of feminism as much as it’s the anti-male bigotry of traditional chivalry."
In Japanese society, your child doing poorly in school is a loss of face and is considered to be very serious. Whether or not it would lead to murder would depend on the individuals involved.
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