Today, there was a murder committed. It was one of those tragic events you read about and say 'How could someone do such a thing..' as a feeling of sadness creeps over until you turn the page and move on with life. A man stabbed a three year old repeatedly in a children's playground. The child was his son.
'How could someone...'
The man had recently lost custody of his son after other incidents of violence against the child and had taken him from his home without consent and then proceeded to commit the most heinous of crimes, the violent murder of a child.
In Finland, it is almost 100% certain that in any custody battle, the mother will retain custody and even though I am an advocate for equality, I am also an advocate against violence. I do believe that there should be a better system in place to test the fitness of a parent but until there is, err on the side of caution. Especially, when children are involved.
A few months ago I wrote a post about violence against children and teaching children to identify strangeness rather than avoid strangers. The reason in short is that if a child is alone and needs assistance, strangers are likely the only resource they have available to call upon.
Going on from this, if they have options as to which stranger to choose, teach them to find the closest woman. The reasoning is quite simple and unfortunate. Men are many times more likely to prey on children sexually or violently whereas women are more likely to stay with a child in need until they know they are safe.
It is not that this is always the case but, statistically speaking, women are more protective of children than men and they extend this out to unknown children also. There is likely a genetic link to have a predisposition of some sort to protect the young, motherly instinct. Due to this, it makes some sense to use the statistical heuristic to send children with the mother except in exceptional cases.
The problem with algorithms though is that they are not precise, which means that things fall through the cracks such as highly unfit mothers and exceptionally good fathers. There are of course movements to try and create equality in this area but I would suggest that the movements are potentially flawed and overly narrow in perspective, maybe selfishly so.
Those that are fighting for equal treatment are likely fathers who are the kinds of father that warrant being treated equally or potentially in many cases are the fitter of the two parents. They therefore feel justified to fight for fair treatment and equal hearing and wronged when they almost certainly lose. But, they are also blinded by their own position.
What they may not take into account is that if they 'win' their fight for equality, they win for all fathers. This sounds great but doesn't take into account that not all fathers are created equally and treating them as equals could put a large number of children at risk. As a parent who considers himself a pretty good dad, I do not see myself putting other children at risk to satisfy my immediate desires.
This is likely a very unpopular view for many men and women but, when we think about our likes and dislikes, we are thinking only from our own experience and knowledge. This means that they are thinking from the frame of 'I would never do that to a child, let alone my own.' But, thinking I would never and never doing can be quite different in reality.
I am relatively certain that three years ago when this little boy came into this world, his father was not thinking that one day he would stab him to death. He was probably crying with joy holding life in his arms for the first time and whispering how he will always love and protect him. He didn't know how badly he would fail, the thought likely never entered his mind. Until it did.
And again statistically speaking, men have a much high propensity for physical violence than women so when they snap, violence is all too common. And in the scenario of failed relationships, court appearances, bruised egos, financial hardships, lack of sleep, anxiety, stress, worry... The potential to snap increases.
When children are around, it is they as innocents who will pay the cost of their parent's inability to manage amicably. All too often, it is they who will bear the brunt of violence in acts of revenge against a spouse or the system.
If equality in this issue is reached, systems that are already under resourced and overloaded will be faced with a near impossible task of attempting to decide which of the two parents is the better suited to take custody. I have little faith in government organisations doing this well. This will result in larger cracks and more slip ups where an increasing amount of children end up at the hands of violence.
Perhaps one day there will be a test to determine parental fitness, maybe it will come in the form of a supercomputer AI that can predict millions of potential scenarios and statistical likelihood of each. I do not know. Until then, I hate to say that I lean towards a system that is unfair against 50 percent of the adults but tries to protect as many children as it can from their violence. Imperfect? Yes.
Perhaps someday when we have all learned a lot more, we will never hear: 'How could someone do such a thing ...' in the negative again.
Taraz
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