Comment by Stuart Munckton
You have probably read about Barbara-Anne Wyrzykowski, the 25 year old who drove her five children, aged 18 months to eight years, to a deserted track just outside of Perth and gassed them and herself to death.
The mainstream press had a field day with this tragedy, using its shock value to sell papers. They splashed it on their front pages and published whatever photos they could get of those involved, particularly the children. The Australian ran a headline "The family that mum killed".
On the pretext of trying to understand why the tragedy occurred, the press dug up Wyrzykowski's life history. In fact, all they did was talk about how she had been constantly pregnant since the age of 17. They also made vague and unsubstantiated references to a "drug problem".
The truth is, the mainstream press are not interested in understanding the causes of this murder-suicide. For them it is just a gruesome tale to horrify their readers. The press aren't interested in the real causes because they would reveal more about the nature of capitalist society than the wealthy owners of newspapers want us to know.
The press reported that Wyrzykowski worked at McDonald's, but they didn't discuss the working conditions at McDonald's and their likely effect on employees' state of mind.
The mainstream press didn't tell us that Wyrzykowski was working full time on "graveyard" shifts, 10pm to 6am, and often did seven of these shifts in a row, and after one night off, did seven more. They didn't discuss the social isolation that results from working night shift.
The mainstream press didn't discuss the fact that, on top of regularly working for up to seven nights in a row, Wyrzykowski had five children to look after. How much sleep had Wyrzykowski been getting? I know how devastating these "graveyard" shifts are on the body and mind. I can't conceive of doing them and caring five young children.
The mainstream press didn't bother to ask why Wyrzykowski, an intelligent young woman, was working at McDonald's anyway. Was there really no other job for her? The answer, of course, is no. Job are hard to come by.
Wyrzykowski had no choice. Feeding five children, while hard to do on McDonald's pitiful wages, would be impossible on the dole.
The mainstream press didn't ask why child-care is not freely available so that women in Wyrzykowski's position don't have to look after them all day after working all night to get the money to feed them.
This tragedy is a direct result of the family system John Howard loves so much. This system forces enormous individual responsibility onto women.
Wyrzykowski has her first child at 17. From then on her life revolved around caring her children. This pressure is hard to bear at any age, but much more so for someone so young.
Wyrzykowski's suicide is easy to understand: she was 25, working night shifts at McDonald's with no prospect of getting out and with many years of child-rearing responsibilities behind and ahead of her, and no assistance from the government. She never had the opportunity to enjoy her youth and there was no prospect of her life improving.
Those of us who knew Wyrzykowski know she was no monster. She was an ordinary person who was worn down. She was friendly and had a sense of humour which, while it was cynical, was far from dark. There was a sense of sadness about her, though. She looked much older than 25.
While no one can know the exact reasons for her decision to take the lives of her children, it is most likely, given how terrible life had been for her, that she simply didn't want her kids to suffer the way she had. To her mind, killing her children would have been an act of compassion.
The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky (talking about the crimes of Stalinism) said the point was not to laugh or cry, but to understand. We should try to understand such terrible events as the deaths of Wyrzykowski and her children in order to help us overthrow once and for all the rotten social system that causes them and replace it with a new society in which such horrors will be unknown.