Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The New Romeo and Juliet

Kara Borden and boyfriend, David Ludwig,were caught yesterday after Ludwig allegedly shot Borden's parents with a single wound to the head. Ludwig is suspected of killing the parents over Kara's curfew. "It's completely insane, completely insane," Lancaster County, Pa., Coroner G. Gary Kirchner said. "This isn't a Romeo-and-Juliet deal. This is far worse than that."

Yes, it is far worse. At least when the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, were barred from seeing each other by their families, they took their own lives. As sad as this may be, they made the decision to kill themselves and did not take others down with them. Now, the former internalizers of aggression are externalizing their anger outwardly. This external use of anger should come as no surprise to the parents of today's teens. American culture worships youth, puts few boundaries on kids (except at school and only as a hypocritical reactive measure) and teaches kids that there are no consequences for their behavior. Even if a parent teaches their kid that no means no--there are peers, television and the wider society that sends the message to kids that they are in charge.

Parents are not allowed to discipline kids for fear that they will land in jail. All kids now know the drill that if they get mad at mom or dad, they can report them to the authorities for child abuse. Even if they never do it, kids realize the threat it holds over their parent's heads. I have talked to many girls in my work as a psychologist who have turned in their father or stepfather for "hitting them" out of anger and revenge. Other parents are also so busy trying to get their kids to like them (God forbid they should be put into the position of being an authority figure--they might end up looking like George Bush or one of those other white men who see the world in moral terms) that they let their kids get away with murder at home and elsewhere. People may think it is cute when a little kids gets his way (I don't, I cringe) but in the end--a teen who will not compromise and insists on getting his or her own way is never an asset and can be a timebomb.

Update: Flavor Country has a good post on the "kidnapping" of Kara Borden. If the tables were turned and we had a fourteen year old boy and eighteen year old girl--would they even have put out an Amber Alert?

13 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

If the tables were turned and we had a fourteen year old boy and eighteen year old girl--would they even have put out an Amber Alert?

Of course not. Remember, boys/men are always wrong, always the aggressors, and can never be victimized by women.

11:37 AM, November 15, 2005  
Blogger reader_iam said...

I'm actually very surprised and a little bit encouraged that my gut reaction to your query was ... wait for it ... just maybe. Always before, I would have "no way." But I guess I'm picking inklings of change on the (however distant) horizon, and I think that at 14 and under, at least, should parents insist anyway, that an amber alert might very well be put out, at least in my neck of the woods. I wouldn't have felt that way just a short time ago.

Hope maybe?

12:47 PM, November 15, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Posts like these make me glad I blogrolled you early.

Thank you for stepping up and stepping out in favor of personal responsibility. The recent "false reporting" trends belittle, disrespect and take focus from the children (and women, and men) who are the real victims of abuse. The level of self-absorption required to falsely report a parent for nonexistent abuse boggles the mind and speaks of a child so coddled and so far-removed from reality as to almost defy reason.

The chilling corollary to "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," is "fail to train up a child and he will grow wild and headstrong." Properly trained, a climbing rose is a beautiful thing. Untrained, it's a hazard and a painful accident waiting to happen. Ditto the human race.

3:08 PM, November 15, 2005  
Blogger BobH said...

Helen

When you ask if an amber alert would be triggered by the disappearance of a 14-year old boy and 18-year old girl/woman, what is the context? Surely you're not asking if this would occur after a double homocide of the boy's parents by the woman.

I am entirely comfortable with being more "protective" of younger girls than younger boys in these types of situations, if only because the pregnancy of a 14-year old girl is significantly more problematic than the pregnancy of an 18-year old woman?

As far as I know, there has been no mention of how close the two of them were. I suspect that in most states, a sexual relationship between the two would be considered statuatory rape. (And, no, I'm not going to call this sort of relationship plain "rape".) If the girl's parents threatened the man with a decade in jail, that may have made shooting them seem like a reasonable response.

Which brings up another question: Is a 14-year old girl having consensual sex with an 18-year old man his victim or his co-conspirator? My issue isn't with applying social severe social sanctions to him; it is with FAILING to apply social sanctions to her. Sanctioning her could lead to something like the weird scenario sometimes seen with teen-age drinking: somebody who isn't old enough to drink is however old enough to go to jail for drinking.

6:12 PM, November 15, 2005  
Blogger DADvocate said...

One thought I have is that home schooling enables a parent to completely spoil a child. I wonder what the "spoil factor" is with these two.

8:40 PM, November 15, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lacking a double homicide, I doubt we would have many amber alerts for 18-year-old females and 14-year-old males. This is simply because very few 14-year-old males are murdered or forcibly raped by 18-year-old females.

I also suspect this case wouldn't have had any alert beyond local law enforcement without the murder.

I don't think it is bias as much as it is experience with unfortunate consequences.

9:17 PM, November 15, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My comment ended up being entry-length, so I'll just post the link here:

http://www.karukeion.com/static/past/2005/11/responsibility.html

12:53 PM, November 16, 2005  
Blogger Helen said...

To $cav3ng3r:

I realize that there are other moral men out there---I used that phrase to make a point about how some left-leaning types feel about authority and moral issues--they associate it with white men--I do not. I don't think morality has to do with skin color or gender. Look at the way Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas are treated by liberals---they are seen as going along with the administration rather than as thinking individuals who have a more conservative set of values.

3:04 PM, November 16, 2005  
Blogger Jacob said...

Romeo and Juliet did take others down with them. Romeo killed Paris right before he took his own life (Paris was guilty only of going to Juiliet's tomb to mourn her).

3:49 PM, November 20, 2005  
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