NEWS AND OPINION: I have read a rather shocking report in The Times this morning (December 7, 2023). The article tells us that “child cruelty rates have doubled in five years, research has shown”. The information relates to England.
My argument is that the domestic cat and the human child are in similar relationships to the adults in a home. They are both vulnerable. They both depend upon the adult humans to provide for them in terms of sustenance, warmth, security et cetera.
If parents are being cruel to their kids, it is plausible to suggest that they are more likely to be cruel to their cats as well. And this cruelty extends to neglect.
Offences involving adults neglecting, mistreating and even assaulting children numbered 29,422 for the period 2022-2023 in England according to the NSPCC analysis of police force information.
For the period 2017-2018, there were 14,263 offences of the same nature.
The NSPCC wants the UK government to commit to wholesale reform of children’s social care supported by improved investment in early intervention and prevention.
The latest NSPCC figures are a wake-up call that the current system is struggling to prevent child abuse.
I would like to see some reporting on the standard of cat caregiving in England at this time and in comparison, to earlier years. I suspect that there’s been a falloff in standards and if I’m correct it would also be shocking.
The newspaper does not tell me why this is happening. That would be an opinion and I guess an opinion isn’t appropriate in a cold report. But I would like to give my opinion here but there’s no certainty that I’m correct.
I don’t think it’s about a lack of money. If there is more neglect of children and arguably companion animals it is because of an altered attitude. And the altered attitude has arisen because society in England is becoming more fragmented and fractious. There are less marriages. Family life as we knew it has been eroded. There’s more stress because of the background stories that constantly emerge. There is fear of global warming and how it will impact children.
Less and less adults are having children nowadays in developed countries and this isn’t just in England but in other countries such as South Korea for instance. Russia is known to have a problem with population growth as has Germany. People in developed countries are not procreating because I suspect they don’t see a great future for their kids. And I think this points to the same underlying problems: a world which is becoming more stressful, more competitive and less stable.
This instability is being created by terrorist states such as Russia. Putin, alone, has destabilised the world. China refuses to take responsibility for global warming and they continue to churn out 30% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions because of coal burning which they will phase out but far too slowly. Climate change cannot be tackled without China’s committed involvement and it isn’t there at the moment.
This attitude worries the common person. It stresses them and as a consequence they become self-absorbed and neglectful of others. Less altruistic, less giving and caring resulting in neglect of those that depend upon them. That’s my outline argument as to what is going on.
P.S. There is an opposite mentality in developing countries where the citizens of those countries like to have more children in order to try and improve their future through an improved family earning capacity. So, it is immigrants to developed countries who are having children while the indigenous people are not. This is changing the demographic in these countries. It’s changing the culture. I make no comment about that. It’s just my observation and I’m sure other people have noted it as well.
