Numbness seems to be the general reaction to the violent deaths of a mother and her two sons, victims, apparently, of one man's rage. How does one even begin to comprehend the state of mind of Stephen Byrne as he drove his car off a pier in Wexford while his sons, Alan and Shane, drew their last breaths in panic, then drowned?

We need to remind ourselves that it is Stephen Byrne's state of mind that is at issue here, and that his wife, Maeve, was as much a victim of it as her two sons. Suggestions in some weekend newspapers that an alleged extramarital affair "led" to her death at her husband's hands cannot be justified in a democratic society.

It makes no sense unless you are living in an eastern country where adultery is punishable by death or where brides are burned for failing to meet the terms of their dowries. Where is the sympathy for Maeve Byrne, who was turning to other men for solace?

While it has been suggested that her "affair" led to her murder, one could just as easily ask why she was "led" to have an affair. And the question of her husband having affairs, if he did, hasn't even been raised.

Just as women are blamed for being rape victims because they were out late at night, or drunk or wearing a revealing outfit, Mrs Byrne is tacitly being blamed for goading her husband into killing her.

What we should really be talking about is what is happening to men and boys in our society that they have murdered seven children this year, and what is happening to women in that five new-born babies have been found dead, buried or washed up on the shoreline?

These 12 child murders - one allegedly committed by a child on another child - are the barometer of a society in which once strong values of child protection have given way to a lack of moral restraint.

Just why and how this has happened is a complex issue. One important factor is that we are suffering a cult of individualism, a contagious feel-good factor by which the individual's needs and desires are paramount. This leads to a moral vacuum in which lack of restraint becomes commonplace and acceptable.

Men, boys and increasingly women and girls are becoming further disinhibited by images of sex and violence in the media, which are brainwashing them into an inability to feel empathy for another's sufferings. Along with this, we are seeing the death of community whereby moral and social constraints were once practised - some might say inflicted - on a daily basis through the watching eyes of neighbours, family and friends.

The "valley of the squinting windows" was an oppressive place to live, and most of us are happy to be free of it. But at the same time close social observation within small communities provided its own natural policing. It would be wrong to idealise this, obviously, since elements in the most powerful police of all - the Catholic Church - physically, emotionally and sexually abused children for decades. And we are sick of hearing about child-abuse cases where social workers and health boards seemed blind to what was going on.

Still, close communities provide some protection. Death of community brings dislocation and social isolation. It is interesting that the Byrne family moved to Cuffes grange, Co Kilkenny, after Mrs Byrne allegedly ended her first affair, and she and her husband decided to make a "fresh start" to save the marriage.

Another issue is the intense pressure on young, nuclear families who are expected to do it all with very little State support. In a family like the Byrnes, where psychological conflict resulted in murder, there must have been intense difficulties and an atmosphere of strife from which the children were unable to escape.

The children, Alan and Shane, were trapped in their little nuclear family, which should be the place where children are safest. For these children the nuclear family was the place where they were least safe.

This says something about our inability to protect children, despite the painful exorcism of child-abuse scandals in recent years. We like to think of ourselves as becoming a more tolerant society that is less tolerant of the abuse of children, yet we are powerless to prevent the ultimate abuse: murder.

Twelve children murdered in 2000 so far. Only one killed last year. But where is the outrage? Remember the extraordinary media panic over the Jamie Bulger killing, yet when 18-month-old Adam Lieghio was burned to death in a petrol-bombing the event received much less Irish media coverage than the disappearance - and subsequently discovered murder - of British schoolgirl Sarah Payne, a story running at the same time.

When five-year-old Nicole Byrne was strangled (a man has been charged with her murder) I don't remember sensing any outpouring of grief and anger on the part of the general public. Eighteen-month-old Oisin Reilly Murphy was stabbed in the neck; three-month-old Leilah Hickey was stabbed, along with her mother (who survived); 18-month-old Jack Brennan was strangled.

And, while five new-born babies - all but one born alive - were found dead this year, none has inspired anything like the attention of the Kerry Babies case or the Granard tragedy. Does this mean that we are more understanding of their mothers' plights? Or does it mean that we couldn't care less?

Maybe that's putting it too strongly, but there is no doubt that we have become desensitised to the victimisation of women and children. We have comforted ourselves by convincing each other that - like rape, car accidents and cancer - violent death is something that happens to other people.

Meanwhile, violence on our streets and in our homes is increasing to the extent that teenage boys take their lives into their hands when they go out on the streets on weekend nights and where so many children are being scalded, beaten and burned with cigarettes that one consultant running a children's hospital casualty department at Temple Street, Dr Peter Keenan, was forced to comment publicly.

We are seeing the death of childhood on a grand scale, where teenagers no longer have a window of safety between childhood and adulthood. Adolescents are thrown into adult issues of sex and violence from the moment they start puberty.

For many babies, issues of sex and violence are being inflicted on them from the moment they start life. It would be reasonable to assume that any baby condemned to being stabbed to death may have survived many other abuses. A safe childhood cannot exist in a society where the child's own parents were denied a childhood, and that, I think, is part of what we are seeing.

While we are now enjoying an economic boom, we are also ironically the survivors of economic hardship and depression and all the social ills that go along with that. Issues of low self-esteem, substance abuse, mental illness and family strife are part and parcel of chronic unemployment, marginalisation and ghetto living.

While it would be impossible to generalise about every case, it would be fair to say that in many deaths of children this year the adults inflicting the abuse did not grow up during the Celtic Tiger era.

They grew up during a time of economic oppression, when thousands were forced to emigrate. They also grew up during a time of moral decay, where the influence of the church was dying, leaving young people with no moorings. They also grew up during a time of the liberal agenda, by which the needs of the individual are paramount.

WE ARE seeing the proof of the pudding created by the human waste of the 1980s. The deaths of the two Byrne children and the 10 others tell us as much about Irish society 20 years ago as they do about Irish society today. Because it was 20 to 30 years ago that the children were created who became the adults who inflicted this violence.

These child deaths also tell us that we are as powerless today to improve the lives of children as we were during the Goldenbridge era. We cannot protect all children all the time. Even when we are asked to protect them, we turn them out on to the streets, where they survive homeless and unloved.

Why do we remain so ineffective in protecting children, despite all the psychological evidence and insight we have garnered as a result of our recent social purging? We haven't come anywhere near answering that question. Or maybe we don't want to see the answer, which is that in Celtic Tiger Ireland it's every family for itself, every child for him or herself. And nobody else really cares.