Dr. Victoria Cain is a 20th century cultural and social historian with specialized interest in education, media, and technology. She is an esteemed author of multiple books and most recent wrote a piece for TIME Magazine’s Made by History section.
“The Problem With Punishing Parents for Their Kids’ Crimes,” published on February 16th, explores the complexity of holding parents liable for their childrens’ crimes, as embodied by the conviction of Jennifer Crumbly’s conviction of four involuntary manslaughter counts for the Michigan high school students murdered by her son in 2021. Dr. Cain points to historical trends which demonstrate that punishing parents does not necessarily correlate to less juvenile crime.
She specifically explores the continuous efforts to mitigate youth behavior from the early 20th century forward including the “punish the parents” law in 1903 and campaigns for parental responsibility laws in the 1950s. All of which have never proven that punishing parents prevent juvenile crime.
Her work is significant as it points to punishing individual parents as a convenient way to ignore the larger issues within the communities and nationally in America which enable children to obtain weapons in the first place. It also points to better incorporation of historian analysis and perspective in mainstream media with the piece being published in TIME’s Made by Historian platform. The platform allows prominent scholars to give readers expert, historian perspectives in a consumable format.
To read the full article click here.
