Relationships - Drawing parallels
Charlie Azzopardi tackles the recent spate of youth killings in Britain and tries to analyse why they are happening
I 'm always enticed by what's going on in the UK, especially where youth is concerned. More and more young people killings are appearing on the news, the last one being that of Rhys Jones, a boy shot dead in the Liverpool neighbourhood. It happens all over the UK, especially in big cities like London, Liverpool and Manchester. So many people in the UK are asking the question "why?". I join them as I try to understand what we can learn from that drama so to avoid it.
This is definitely a symptom. Such behaviour is a problem that needs to be understood within its context. It's easy to blame the young people and accuse them of immorality and violence. It's easy to blame the symptom bearer, lock him up in prison and believe we are fighting the war. How much of the problem would we be solving?
And it is a symptom of what? A symptom of the psychological drama youth find themselves in at this point in history? A symptom of the growing social discontent? A symptom of the capitalist, consumerist and individualist society? A symptom of the loneliness and confusion our youth experience in an increasingly confusing world?
I honestly prefer not to bother myself with such questions and to believe that it's their problem and as such the British need to resolve this on their own. It's not our reality after all and as such I shouldn't think about it any further. It's so easy to think that way, but the truth is that this is just round the corner and we all have the responsibility to reflect on it, to assist the British to resolve this and to do anything possible to prevent this symptom from infecting our own youth in Malta.
It already has, mind you. The recent shooting in Paceville is a case in point. A young man shooting another young man. But this is not the first time and we have to make sure this doesn't repeat itself. I talk to policemen who tell me how young people increasingly dare against any form of authority and who think they can beat anyone and defy the law. Adolescents I meet in my clinic tell me how they belong to gangs and how these gangs provide them with a sense of security in an otherwise anarchic territory.
These gangs often provide a sense of belonging and a pseudo-identity to young people who are otherwise psychologically self-less and unhappy.
The values youth are being taught in the UK are ones that revolve around the self. "If it makes you feel good, do it" and "if you like it, go for it and have it". This is quite hedonistic and self centred and youth are increasingly finding it difficult to think of the common good, which is the key to social survival.
This means that children brought up this way are finding it increasingly difficult to wait and delay gratification, to make sacrifice, and to think ecologically, that is "how will my behaviour influence those around me?"
It has a long history, of course, and dates back to when politicians started to promote the idea that people should expect everything for free from the government. It came about at a time when governments started institutionalising parenting and taking parenting away from the realm of the family responsibility. Because of a handful of brain-washed politicians and academics, they jumped hard on parents and told them that their way of parenting is not good and introducing the "if-you-shout-at-your-child-you-go-to-prison" attitude.
It needs to be acknowledged though that the original intention was to stop parents battering their children. But it went beyond that. Unplanned publicity made the message be interpreted by many children in the wrong way as they started threatening their parents with child protection services which unfortunately, pushed by the need to justify their salaries, intervened, thus giving children the idea of control over their parents. This is an inverted position children should never find themselves in, for their own safety and happiness. Luckily British Parliament recently refused to pass law prohibiting parents from even scolding their children.
The point is that politicians robbed parents from the only methods they knew to control their children. One expects this to happen within a context where parents are invited to learn new and effective ways of parenting. But instead, they were just prohibited with no alternative method being offered to them in replacement. Isn't this robbing parents from the only thing they knew about? What's left to them? How was discipline to be administered?
The British are now returning back to basics. Some time ago the British Parliament passed a law that punishes parents if they don't manage to get their children to go to school. What happened is that the system didn't work. First they robbed parents of their authority and ultimately the parents failed to even make their own children go to school. Now the politicians return to ridiculously punish the victim: The parents.
But I suppose there's even more to it than simply politics, even though finally it all boils down to votes. There is something about gender as well. All the youth killings in the UK have to do with boys. The recent stoning of a middle-aged man by four teenagers was horrendous. There are several reasons why boys tend to be more violent than girls. It's partly nature, testosterone coupled by the hunting instinct still running in their blood. Yet, nurture plays a more important role.
Gender research suggests that boys and girls are reared differently and that the parents' and general social expectations from them are different. Therefore there's something wrong with how we're rearing boys. Or at least there's something we are doing with girls which we are not doing with boys. Have we lost some of the details by our modern focus on gender equality? Have we failed to appreciate some of the gender differences and failed to welcome them in our repertoire of behaviour?
Continues next week
• Dr Azzopardi is a systemic family psychotherapist.
www.family-life-works.com
This is definitely a symptom. Such behaviour is a problem that needs to be understood within its context. It's easy to blame the young people and accuse them of immorality and violence. It's easy to blame the symptom bearer, lock him up in prison and believe we are fighting the war. How much of the problem would we be solving?
And it is a symptom of what? A symptom of the psychological drama youth find themselves in at this point in history? A symptom of the growing social discontent? A symptom of the capitalist, consumerist and individualist society? A symptom of the loneliness and confusion our youth experience in an increasingly confusing world?
I honestly prefer not to bother myself with such questions and to believe that it's their problem and as such the British need to resolve this on their own. It's not our reality after all and as such I shouldn't think about it any further. It's so easy to think that way, but the truth is that this is just round the corner and we all have the responsibility to reflect on it, to assist the British to resolve this and to do anything possible to prevent this symptom from infecting our own youth in Malta.
It already has, mind you. The recent shooting in Paceville is a case in point. A young man shooting another young man. But this is not the first time and we have to make sure this doesn't repeat itself. I talk to policemen who tell me how young people increasingly dare against any form of authority and who think they can beat anyone and defy the law. Adolescents I meet in my clinic tell me how they belong to gangs and how these gangs provide them with a sense of security in an otherwise anarchic territory.
These gangs often provide a sense of belonging and a pseudo-identity to young people who are otherwise psychologically self-less and unhappy.
The values youth are being taught in the UK are ones that revolve around the self. "If it makes you feel good, do it" and "if you like it, go for it and have it". This is quite hedonistic and self centred and youth are increasingly finding it difficult to think of the common good, which is the key to social survival.
This means that children brought up this way are finding it increasingly difficult to wait and delay gratification, to make sacrifice, and to think ecologically, that is "how will my behaviour influence those around me?"
It has a long history, of course, and dates back to when politicians started to promote the idea that people should expect everything for free from the government. It came about at a time when governments started institutionalising parenting and taking parenting away from the realm of the family responsibility. Because of a handful of brain-washed politicians and academics, they jumped hard on parents and told them that their way of parenting is not good and introducing the "if-you-shout-at-your-child-you-go-to-prison" attitude.
It needs to be acknowledged though that the original intention was to stop parents battering their children. But it went beyond that. Unplanned publicity made the message be interpreted by many children in the wrong way as they started threatening their parents with child protection services which unfortunately, pushed by the need to justify their salaries, intervened, thus giving children the idea of control over their parents. This is an inverted position children should never find themselves in, for their own safety and happiness. Luckily British Parliament recently refused to pass law prohibiting parents from even scolding their children.
The point is that politicians robbed parents from the only methods they knew to control their children. One expects this to happen within a context where parents are invited to learn new and effective ways of parenting. But instead, they were just prohibited with no alternative method being offered to them in replacement. Isn't this robbing parents from the only thing they knew about? What's left to them? How was discipline to be administered?
The British are now returning back to basics. Some time ago the British Parliament passed a law that punishes parents if they don't manage to get their children to go to school. What happened is that the system didn't work. First they robbed parents of their authority and ultimately the parents failed to even make their own children go to school. Now the politicians return to ridiculously punish the victim: The parents.
But I suppose there's even more to it than simply politics, even though finally it all boils down to votes. There is something about gender as well. All the youth killings in the UK have to do with boys. The recent stoning of a middle-aged man by four teenagers was horrendous. There are several reasons why boys tend to be more violent than girls. It's partly nature, testosterone coupled by the hunting instinct still running in their blood. Yet, nurture plays a more important role.
Gender research suggests that boys and girls are reared differently and that the parents' and general social expectations from them are different. Therefore there's something wrong with how we're rearing boys. Or at least there's something we are doing with girls which we are not doing with boys. Have we lost some of the details by our modern focus on gender equality? Have we failed to appreciate some of the gender differences and failed to welcome them in our repertoire of behaviour?
Continues next week
• Dr Azzopardi is a systemic family psychotherapist.
www.family-life-works.com