Scientists claim that if you physically punish or otherwise abuse your child, that child will have a higher probability of becoming physically aggressive, cruel, or even criminial as a grown up. But other people contest that it is the inherently bad child that, on the one hand, is more likely to become (or rather: stay) miscreant as grown up and, on the other hand, more likely to be physically punished by its desparate parents.

The question if parental conduct influences a child's character or if it is the other way round lies at the heart of Shrivers novel about Kevin who grows up to kill 11 people in a highschool-shooting. The relation to his mother Eva is rocky right from the beginning and only gets worse. Kevin does not drink his mother's milk, he will not be pacified by her and certainly does not play with her. He ruins everything she holds dear while showing no attachment either to persons or objects. In the course of his childhood and youth there are multiple incidents in which Kevin hurts other children, which culminate in his killing eight co-students, one teacher, his father and his little sister.

Is all this the mother's fault? That is what Shriver’s novel-mother Eva asks herself and which the ending may imply. But although in her afterword the author claims otherwise, I have the impression that from the beginning almost to the end of the novel Kevin is described in a way that puts all the blame on him. He is presented as such an evil child that it is easy to understand how Eva denies him any love at all. The relationship to his father Franklin seems better, but only on first sight: Eva is rightly convinced that Kevin only plays happy family with him and indeed, towards the end of the novel, Kevin himself describes his father as a dupe.

So, according to the novel, the responsibilty clearly lies with Kevin who simply is an evil character.

But: this is a novel, it is fiction. The author herself does not have children because she does not want to. Of course she, too, has every right to write about what forms children’s characters - but how should she know? The Kevin in the novel is definitely a flat character and not really convincing. He is not modelled along the lines of real persons, he is not modelled according to scientific findings. What the novel really tells us is how the relation between children's characters and parental ways are in Shrivener's  mind. Therefore, the novel will not give us any relevant insights. It might, however, raise relevant questions or just be entertaining. But beware: reading about Kevin really hurts.