Unfortunately a great post. Next discovery of Mom's -eating disorder. A good doctor or book will tell Mom that now. What will the school say then, 80% of girls this age have eating disorders?

Where did Malkin blame it on Hollywood? I don't see that at all.

That quibble aside, I agree with your conclusion. It is absolutely a "cry for help" from a child who isn't getting everything they need in terms of both affection and discipline from their family.

I'll more than likely be flamed, but:

has two homes (mine and her dad's) with supportive, loving families in each...

Split families end up hiding a bunch more problems than whole families do.

As a child of divorce, I know this to be true. A fractured family might not be the only cause for such destructive behavior, but it is certainly a contributing factor.

I should also READ the whole post before I think I'm posting something enlightening, and also end my tags in the right places...

New fad? I knew kids who were into this stuff when I was in high school. It's a common self-destructive behavior. These people are just noticing it now??

In fact, who knows why kids latch onto fads, self-destructive or otherwise?

But I have to echo Robert's point; when I was that age I'd not have been allowed to get away with that, either. I'd never have been able to hide it from my folks or my siblings.

Of course, in my day simple pencil-lead tattoos that read "KISS rules!" were the cutting edge of body modifications among teens. O How far we've come.

I work at a Barnes and Noble in an very affluent neighborhood. Girls as young as 10 dress like Paris Hilton gone clubbing, various piercings and stud implants and the like (and ass-cleavage tattoos for teen girls) are apparently not just approved of but mandatory, and the bookstore plays the role of chaperone and parent to too many kids to count.

"Society" sure as hell didn't make it happen. Idiot parents allowed it to happen.

{/screed}

Oh, and one last comment ... I am confused a bit by your analysis here. I was never allowed to "run loose" either. And still - I was extremely self-destructive (in this hurting-myself kind of way - not in a promiscuous or druggie kind of way) in high school.

I could definitely explain to you what the appeal of hurting myself was. I know what it was about, and why I did it, but it's funny - it's like there seems to be only ONE way to talk about these issues (all the ways you list here) - and there's no room for anything else.

You can put my self-destructive tendencies down to crappy parenting, but that would be completely incorrect. I assure you - my parents were involved caring parents. And still are. Oh yeah, and they're still married.

All of this is purely anecdotal, but I have to throw it out there, because I disagree with all of the reasoning I have heard thus far.

Oh and lastly - "emo" has been around for 20 years. It is not a "new music genre". Malkin's column sounds like she just landed here from another planet.

"What is this 'emo' you discuss??"

Yeah, I know. Me Ward Cleaver.

Look, in the article, Malkin presented an example of self-destructive behavior to demonstrate Hollywood's pernicious influence on kids. The point I was trying to make was that the mother's own story suggested there were a number of explanations other than Christina Ricci for why her daughter was cutting herself, many of them grounded in the kid's own family environment. I strongly suspect that this is the case with many other such children.

My reference to "running loose" went simply to the matter of parental vigilance. Many parents, including, apparently, this mother, seem absolutely unaware of what their kids are doing until it becomes a crisis that leaves them gob-smacked. What I was suggesting is that she might have been able to spot the problem much earlier and possibly head it off before it got out of hand if she paid more attention than she seems to have done.

I am certainly not arguing that there is only one way to talk about these issues. I do not approach such matters in terms of absolutes. (And of course I don't know your particular circumstances and I don't presume to judge them.)

Rather, I am talking about behavioral risk reduction in terms of percentages. As a general premise - and based on my own empirical observation - I'm simply contending that a)there is less likelihood that a child is going to do something like this if they come from a stable background and b) if they do, for whatever reason, start to slide into such behavior, engaged parents are far more likely to spot the problem earlier and, presumably, try to do something about it. (Whether they succeed is a different issue.)

Does this mean that all those 2.3 kids from stereotypical Eisenhower Era nuclear families are squeeky clean and free of all psychopathologies? Of course not. Does it mean that all kids who don't come from such families grow up to be basket cases? Again, of course not. I never suggested such a thing.

In the end, my point was simply that Malkin's fingering of Hollywood distracts parents from where they really ought to be focusing their energies, which is right at home. I believe her example proved my point, not hers.

(And for the record, I always thought an Emo was a large, flightless bird from Australia.)

I read Malkin's article, I read the whole thing. Why do you think I didn't?

I think she sounds naive, behind the times, and like an alien dropped here from another planet. I was embarrassed for her.

Sorry. I hear what you're saying, and like I said - my sharing my own story is sheerly anecdotal. Some people (not you, I'm just saying some) have an intolerance to even discuss other possibilities of why teens may do this. The bogeyman: lax parents - ah yes, we can blame them for everything! Broken homes! Yes - THAT'S why kids cut themselves!

Malkin needs to do a bit more homework. There are BOOKS written about "cutting".

You ever read Kimberly Swygert, the educational blogger? She's got some great stuff to say, in general, about emo, cutting, and goth culture.

And to you last point - of COURSE parents need to be aware of what their kids are doing, reading, who their friends are, etc. To point the finger at Hollywood is a cop-out.

My sister loved Marilyn Manson music as a teenager. My sister did not shoot up her school a la Columbine.

I love Eminem. But I do not smack up ho's and pistol-whip bouncers who get in my way.

Etc. Etc.

Add your own examples.

I'll have to check out Swygert.

I think we're cool here. I just pushed back because I didn't want you getting the idea that I was blindly pigeon-holing all kid behavioral problems under the Broken Home/Lax Parents rubric. Nonetheless, in a great many of the cases that I read about, it's not a bad place to start looking for answers.

(And, of course, I should have said that the fact pattern in the article "supported" my position instead of Malkins, not "proved" it. Bad lawyer.)

I've gotta say: one of my pet peeves is when people like Malkin suddenly take notice of pop culture (when - er - most of us have been here all along) and suddenly realize that we're all going to hell in a handbasket because of, oh ,rap music. When it's been around since the 1970s. It's a really common phenomenon - and sometimes it's amusing - (and really EARNEST, too: like: "Why do kids like rap? Why???") and sometimes I find it ignorant.

Swygert's great - one of my daily reads. I highly recommend her.

http://www.kimberlyswygert.com/

I frequent one of the new car forums, and one topic that comes up very regularly is how soon to change the oil the first time on the new car.
Now, being Honda engines, they're supposed to go 10k between oil changes. The manual says go 10k before your first. And use normal oil.
It is amazing how many replies to the question are along the lines of, I changed my oil after the first 300 miles, use super-synthetic-slick-as-snot oil, and my engine hasn't blown up a whole 50 miles later! So thats what I recommend you do!
This is what I am seeing here. I knew a girl who was a cutter growing up. She was still doing it in her twenties. 10 years later, she still has bad scars on her arms. But back then, she was a rarity. Statisticly abnormal.
The issue before us all today is that this is no longer rare. That kids as young as 10 are doing it, and up to 70% of kids in some schools are practicing this. Do we want to see a graph here that will show this trend taking off?
So anecdotal evidences of, well, I listened to the Cure in the 80's, and I didn't cut myself are completely useless.
The problem is what, in the past several years, has made this a popular trend? That is what Michele Malkin is trying to open up for discussion. Pinning it on Hollywood? Maybe, she listed off a few popular actresses. I have no doubt that some impressionable young girls read about cutting and tried it.
Now, when the first young girl, who tries this for the first time, messes up and slices through an artery, bleeds out and dies, who will her parents try to sue?

I saw some of this yesterday and thought about posting. After reading the comments since then, I want to point out that if there were an epidemic of polio in schools, you'd get your kid the hell out of there. On the other hand, STDs, drug/ alcohol/ tobacco use, violence of the ultimate myriad that includes the risingly popular cutting, crappy education and liberalism (ha - gotcha! You thought I left my humor at home) are rampant in the schools, yet the kids stay put. Everywhere they (and their parents) turn, in movies, television, clothing, peer behavior, games and ads, the message of "do your own thing consequence-free - whatever" is repeated. And it does end up resting on the choices of the parents to expose kids to these things. It is the toughest job.

(sigh)
Nice linking you you guys. Since everyone is getting all "De-linking" on this one, you guys are gone, because Malkin is a damn tool about this. And I stand with my Yankees. Kicking ASV off her roll because of an argument about a topic? Shit, I'd be left with Drudge and BlenderBoy. And Sully when Fire Island is in season.