Madeline McCann

[winterbadger]

While I feel terrifically sorry for her parents and can understand their wanting to do anythign possible to find their missing daughter, and while I think the outpouring of support for them is heartwarming, I can't help but be disturbed by the huge media circus this has become. How many other little girls (or little boys) went missing at the same time? Why are their cases not getting this sort of attention? Why do little children get this sort of attention, but not older people? An article in the BBC recently told of an older woman who had been dead for SIX YEARS and had not been sought by neighbours or family until her mummified corpse was found in her flat when someone bought it.

Comments

[winterbadger]

How curious. It's not that way in the UK and Ireland, AFAIK. Pretty much every English-speaking discussion I've seen, whether in LJ or in comments on news sites has been universally condemnatory of the parents' behavior in leaving such young children unsupervised. They're often leavened with sympathetic asides like "No one deserves to have their children disappear, but..." but I've not seen anyone say something along the lines of "Oh, we do that all the time with our kids" or "I don't see what all the fuss is about leaving kids alone."

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

Just a couple examples:
My danish Servas hosts regaled me with stories of how Danish moms would visit/move to the US and leave kids in strollers outside stores and houses while mom went inside to run errands. Needless to say, this caused the locals to freak out, which baffled the Danes in question.

An Austrian mom I met with two young kids (not babies or toddlers--I think they were 5-7) said to me "of course I'd leave them home and go out after they're asleep. Why not?"

[winterbadger]

I guess it's just a European thing then. I can't imagine any American or British parents I know doing either of those things, and the comments I've seen suggest strongly that parents who did so in the UK, as well as the US, could be prosecuted for neglect and child endangerment.

I'm not a parent, and I think that parents (especially new parents) and US society in general sometimes go ridiculously overboard on some questions of child safety and child rearing. But I can't imagine any responsible adult leaving children younger than teenagers alone in a house (let alone a strange hotel) and going out for the evening, or leaving kids in strollers or cars unattended. That's so incredibly irreponsible (to my mind) that it makes me think of Keanu Reeves' line in Parenthood. ("You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any [idiot] be a father.")

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

I agree to an extent, but not with your age cutoff (I'd say 8 or maybe 10). Hell, when we were 11 or 12 my sister and I (seperately, mostly her) were *babysitting other kids*. I first started being a latchkey kid at 13 (And was lobbying for it somewhat earlier--I hated afterschool care).

(I'm having vague recollections from German classes that leaving kids alone was definitely the norm there as well. I don't recall hearing lots of horror stories either. Are their kids more responsible? There homes/towns less dangerous? I don't really know.)

[winterbadger]

Well, I imagine that if there's an expectation in their society that kids of a certain age will be responsible and able to look after themselves that the kids will become so.

I wonder how old I was when my parents first started leaving me by myself. I remember it happening, and I'm pretty sure I remember my sisters both being gone by then. I do recall the last time they had someone (one of my father's students) come over to watch me; I was disgusted at the time because I was sure I was old enough to be by myself. And I remember the guy bringing a can of dog food, because he knew we had a big dog and he thought it would be a good idea to make friends. :-)

I should ask my mum about that--it would probably be a fun distraction from throwing out all my dad's old research papers.