Self-Defense & Violence Prevention Blog

I have heard politicians and others say that violence starts in the home, meaning that rising or continuing violent crime rates result from bad parenting. While they say this to excuse their own law enforcement failures, I cannot deny the truth.

Many violent children learned violence from growing up around it. Even if parents do not expose their children to violence, they can fail to teach their children non-violence. Also, children who live in broken homes, or otherwise have to deal with poor parenting or neglect, will lash out. Simply put, bad parenting leads to violence in many ways.

Saying that does nothing to solve the problem, though.

Bad parents exist. Many children grow up in conditions conducive to violence. As a result, violent people victimize innocent people.

Pointing out why violence happens does not excuse law enforcement from failing to protect innocent people. The world will always have some violent victimizers. We cannot just point out the causes of violence, we need to protect people.

Of course, we can also try to reduce the need to protect people by fighting the causes.

We can fight bad parenting by making them pay for the consequences of their children’s actions. Currently, if someone commits a crime, the taxpayers have to pay for the ensuing investigation, arrest, trial, and incarceration. Why?! The taxpayers did not commit the crime. Let the criminal pay for the entire costs of their crime. In the case of minors, let the cost fall on the parents. This will give them the incentive to raise their children correctly.

If parents cannot raise their children correctly, I suggest putting the children up for adoption. To facilitate that, society needs to make sure it has a way to correctly raise these parentless children.

What do you think?