The Abuse of Children

The protection of children from all kinds of abuse is a responsibility we all share as parents or good neighbours and citizens. Beyond that it is the business of law-makers, police and social agencies. But conspicuously absent in the national debate about this pattern of behaviour are profound questions about the way we raise and educate boys;  especially with regard to masculinity, sexual identity and attitudes to women. And before the more separatist, misandrist fringes of feminism gear up to pose this as a problem exclusively for men, it is worth reminding ourselves that every abusive male had a mother. That is not to blame women, merely to suggest that this most appalling and disturbing social, sexual behavioural problem arises from a dysfunction in the relationship between men and women; not simply in the genetic make-up of men.

Being male is genetic, biological. Being a man is a social, educational, cultural construct – and we are all getting that disastrously wrong.

Filed under: Journalism, Letter, politics