by Silver Flower

Created on: December 22, 2009

I am voicing my opinion based on my background experience in both the criminal justice system: corrections, and as a social worker in child protective services.  Prior to that, I was usually of the opinion that parents did the best they could in raising their child, and then their bad behaviour resulted from bad choices the grown child made, no matter how wonderful the parents were.  Now I am not so sure.

I worked in a maximum security prison as an administrative secretary to the clinic director of the department which also covered mental health and addictions programs.  Inmate case histories came across my desk.  In my capacity, I had the opportunity to read about events that led to an inmate being incarcerated.  A common thread seemed to appear in most of the inmate's lives.  Bad choices seemed to be based on common denominators, which seemed to stem from unfortunate events and poor parenting.

A majority of the inmates seemed to have been brought up in broken homes.  Single parenting was common.  The missing parent appeared to be unable to accept responsibility of being a parent; did not want to be a parent; or, only cared about themselves.  No good role model for parenting was passed on to the child. Consequently, the child sometimes grew up taking some of the negative characteristics of of bad parenting they received.  Sociopathic behaviour was not uncommon.

Criminal behaviour was the norm in these families, rather than the exception.  Incarceration was no big deal.  Sexual molestation was another factor that appeared to be a common thread.  This is not to say that all inmates experienced sexual molestation, and made choices to do the same to others with gender not a requirement.  Sometimes homosexuality, and related crimes, resulted from choices made as the result of bad experiences during their developing years.

Now switching to the types of parents I encountered as a cps social worker.  I found some of the parents were incapable of being good parents, sort of a generational problem.  Many types of abuse were inflicted on the children, some horrific, no wonder the child was damaged and grew up having damaged thinking.  The child often mimicked parent's, or caregiver's, behaviour not knowing  that what they were doing was not a good thing. The children/adolescents sometimes took it for granted this was normal behaviour until intervention

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