Quote

Sometimes it seems as though all parents are certain that their children are victims of abuse by other children.

When they are treated, the seriously mentally ill aren't more violent than the general population. If untreated, though, they are.

Somehow it seems that all parents are certain that they themselves were victims of abuse in school and that they will not allow this to happen to their children. Even though children can also be the cruelest group imaginable - especially the cutest of them.

The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.

Ultimately, very few people parent their kids in ways that strike anybody else as reasoned, appropriate or sane.

Parents are perhaps the most common object of resentment, the people who are most frequently blamed for all our failings and failures alike.

Of course, parents are the most important people in a child's life.

Family violence is a criminal act; perpetrators, while often former victims themselves, need to accept culpability.

The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills.

People with mental health problems are almost never dangerous. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. At the same time, mental illness has been the common denominator in one act of mass violence after another.