Life Is Short; Have an Affair

[thesummerqueen]

Not necessarily. Nature vs nurture are more nuanced than that.

I know they are, lol. That's my point. You can't say "oh there's no way this person is this way due to nature because his dad isn't this way" in the same way that you can't say "oh there's no way this person is this way because of nurture because his siblings aren't the same way." I agree, they are more nuanced. Both of them. I was using Vic's own logic about the former to make a case for the latter, but truth is they are both weak points. I just don't think we should pretend to be someone's psychologist and say the person's upbringing by the parents caused them to do whatever horrible thing they did. It's rash judgement, and unfair to the parents.

You must have missed the part where I said the parents could entirely be to blame if only because they were also raised in such environments.

There's a concept that people who grew up with relatives who have NPD call "fleas" - you can't help but catch some of the shit these people fling off. I think that's true of just about any upbringing. My father grew up with what I am now 99% sure was a mother and sister (my aunt) both suffering (happily suffering, it seemed) from NPD. The things he dealt with were things he in turn projected and inflicted on me, on a much lesser scale, but it's still there. I've since come to terms with it, now that I understand it.

Anyway, my point is that Josh's parents could likewise have been raised in such an environment, and possibly their parents too, and they're only further spreading a repressive, toxic and selfish worldview onto their children. And while we haven't heard that any of the other children have done those things yet, it's possible that more of them had that potential, but a variety of complicated reasons means Josh is the only one who did something about it - anything from his individual personality to his ranking in the pack to something he got told once by someone when he was a kid. You say you can't blame the parents. I say you can, at least in part. Why? Because when he did it, he was 14 years old. Still a minor, and theoretically still under the teaching and guidance of those parents, as were his sisters.

Apparently steps were taken to 'help' Josh and they were irresponsible and did nothing to help or protect the sisters. Most parents I know in my secular community would have moved the earth to make sure their kids got the appropriate therapy they needed. The Duggers didn't. You're damn right I blame them, even if they are part of a cycle and not the initiators, because guaranteed there were signs before the molestations happened that they didn't pay attention to or treat properly.