Children Who Kill Their Parents - Research Paper Example

? Children Who Kill Their Parents Children Who Kill Their Parents Literature Review Incidences of children killing their parents (parricide) have increased over a period of years. Sandra Elaine Lerner in her research article “Children Who Kill Their Parents” revealed that family members kill their people in countries such as United States, Canada, and Britain. Elaine points out that family has been the heart of serious and dreadful violence in the society. Elaine’s research sought to address two questions. The first question was to assess the trends of parricide in the families. The second concern of the survey was to look at the motives why sons and daughters kill their mothers and fathers. Elaine reported that cases of children killing their parents have been happening. Elaine observed that people do not report violence, which involves children and their parents. According to Elaine’s report, sociologists hold that oppression, disenfranchisement, and poverty are principal contributors to parricide. Sociologists feel that children who kill their parents have witnessed or are victims of domestic violence (Lerner, 1992). In addition, Elaine’s report pointed out that parricides occur in ambitious and rich families. The case studies of parricide in this research revealed that problems of children upbringing contributed to their actions of killing parents. Some children strongly believed that parents showed little love and affection to them. For instance, some parents preferred taking their children to foster homes rather than rearing them. Elaine argued that this made children develop hatred for their parents gradually. According to Elaine’s research work, tendencies of parricide start with incidences such as strangling rats. Some of the children with these habits use their own bare hands to kill the rats (Lerner, 1992). This makes them harden and ready to commit murder. Elaine’s research further revealed that some children lacked attention from their parents since the time they were young. These children encounter a great deal of neglect in the family. Other parents give favors to some children and leave others unattended. Children feel abandoned and therefore develop behaviors and tendencies in order to revenge. For instance, children start displaying suicidal attempts and thinking deeply on the ways to eradicate their parents. When this behavior reaches extreme levels, children overreact through murdering their inattentive parents (Lerner, 1992). Elaine’s research indicated this action by the children to prevent further rejections by their parents. Elaine’s findings indicated that sexual abuse of children by their parents creates resentment. For instance, the case studies which Elaine’s research employed revealed that fathers assault their daughters sexually. Children can cope with this behavior for sometime. However, children become resistant to sexual harassment at certain points in their lives. Although children contemplate on whether to kill themselves or their parents, eventually they end up killing their fathers or mothers (Lerner, 1992). Elaine’s research article points out that killing of parents is a result of their betrayal of children. The kids do not commit suicide but they kill their parents. Another study by Lewis Dorothy et al. revealed that neuropsychiatric and family traits contribute to behavior of children to kill their parents. In their research article, Dorothy used nine participants, who were male, to investigate their clinical behavior in adolescent stages. The research compared the nine male participants with 24 imprisoned delinquents. The seriousness of murder in all different kinds of crimes attracted the researchers to conduct this study. In the light of this, the research article sought to address neurological and psychological factors that contributed to parricide. To achieve this purpose, Lewis and her colleagues evaluated results of nine adolescents with 24 young children discharged from prison. This research assessed neuro-psychiatrically a sample size of nine adolescent men in the age brackets of 12 to 18 years (Lewis et al., 2007). The study of Lewis and her colleagues came up with many findings. To start with, all nine adolescents who participated in the research indicated that they had behaviors of violence during childhood and teenage stages. The research pointed out these nine subjects had witnessed cases of violence for a long period before they committed murder. Some of these children had attempted robbery and sexual assault of women many years before their arrest. Second, the research indicated that all nine adolescents killed people when they were at a tender age. For instance, one of the nine adolescents put his bed on fire when he was four years old. Similarly, another child had been very brutal since childhood, and grade school could not accept him to start learning. This left his parents without a feasible alternative other than training him at home. Other children among the nine in the study terrorized their teachers with razor blades and others killed birds and threw their dogs through windows (Lewis et al., 2007). This research asserted that the most probable explanation of killing acts of older teenagers was spontaneous rather than predictable. However, the research could not establish whether killing behavior of the participants happened during psychotic incidence, episodes that depend on organic discontrol and seizures. The findings alluded that adolescents in the study displayed psychotic behavior such as anger at the onset of their adolescent stage. Other children in the study had extreme neurological harm. For example, eight adolescents in the study indicated that they had records of big seizures. In addition, other groups of adolescents manifested lack of consciousness with reality. Furthermore, these participants had many symptoms of psychomotor epilepsies such as olfactory hallucinations, and metamorphopsias (Lewis et al., 2007). Dorothy’s research concluded that serious cases of the Central Nervous System dysfunction together with obsession with psychotic thoughts were responsible for killing behavior of nine adolescents who participated in the research. This was because they lived in psychotic homes and witnessed violence among their parents. According to the research, these experiences were enough for the nine teenagers to develop tendencies to kill their parents (Lewis et al., 2007). Therefore, Dorothy and her colleagues suggested that biophysical factors of these adolescents required social, psychiatric, and medical attention. A third study by Malmquist Carl revealed that children who kill their parents do not manifest clinical symptoms and signs of psychotic disorder. Carl’s research article depicted that the majority of children who commit parricide had bipolar, depressive, and other conduct disorders. On top of this, these children abused substances such as Comorbid. Carl’s report revealed that parents who mistreated their children later become victims of parricide. Poor treatment of children by their parents led to development of sour relationship between the two parties. Carol argued that physical and psychological abuse of adolescents contributed significantly to killing of parents. This implied parents inflicted traumatic experiences in their children who revenged by committing parricide. According to this research, many incidences of parricide were a demonstration of continued embarrassment of children and adolescents by their parents. It was a culmination of an abuse perpetrated upon their lives for a long time. Carol blamed the society for its unresponsiveness to tame mistreatment of children. Failure of community to take actions compelled adolescents to punish their parents by killing them. The study concluded that feeling of resentment, injustice, and anger resulted in parricide (Malmquist, 2010). In conclusion, the literature review indicates that the causes of children killing their parents range form physical and psychological to emotional and behavioral factors. The increasing numbers of cases of parricide provoke feeling of dismay and shock. This has elicited researchers to conduct researches on psychological, biological, and social aspects in order to account for juvenile homicide. The literature review of these earlier studies on parricide presents varying explications and explanation about this issue. According to Lewis’ study, actions of parents to deny their children care and attention, which they deserve, fuels development of violent behaviors. While this research focuses on actions of adolescents before they commit homicide, questions arise on whether the small sample size reflected fully the whole issue of parricide. The choice of participants, who are boys from prison, presents questions of bias in the study. Further researches should focus on exploring the parricidal tendencies of free adolescents from their childhood to teenage. In addition, researchers should use adequate sample size to come up with convincing findings. Other surveys should look at relationship between mental illness or deformities in children and parricide. Moreover, more researches should examine whether there is a relationship between parricide and criminal activities. This will improve the available knowledge on the issue of children who kill their parents. References Lerner, S.E. (1992). Children who kill their parents. Retrieved 15 June 2012 from https://www.uleth.ca/dspace/bitstream/handle/10133/1117/Lerner_Sandra_Elaine.pdf?sequence=1. Lewis, D., et al. (2007). Biopsychosocial characteristics of children who later murder: A prospective study. Retrieved 15 June 2012 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072934/. Malmquist, C. (2010). Adolescent parricide as a clinical and legal problem. Retrieved 15 June 2012 from http://www.jaapl.org/content/38/1/73.full.pdf+html. Read More