London - Should you ever leave a child home alone?
That’s the question at the heart of a fierce debate triggered by the revelation that a British mother is fighting to wipe from her record an eight-year-old police caution she received for leaving her six-year-old son alone for 45 minutes.
Parenting groups were horrified at her treatment, while others warned children must be protected at all times.
Here, five parents and one expert give their passionate opinions.
I left my baby in the garden to go shopping
Tessa Cunningham, mother of two
My daughter Ellen was barely three months old when I first left her home alone. It was a warm autumn afternoon and she was in the garden at our home in Denham, Buckinghamshire, dozing in her Silver Cross pram.
I desperately needed to do the weekly shop, but Ellen looked so peaceful and content that it seemed crazy to wake her and drag her off round a crowded, noisy supermarket.
So I left her pram on the grass, locked the front door and went to do my shopping.
I didn’t worry or rush back, and she was still asleep when I came home an hour later.
And so it set a pattern. I carried on leaving Ellen, and then Elise, who’s 17 months younger, alone for brief periods.
My mother had advised me to do it. Back in the Sixties she left me in my pram - in the front garden, where I would gurgle at passersby - for hours on end, while she was busy indoors or at the shops.
‘It’s good for babies - plenty of fresh air and lots of stimulation,’ she explained.
When my own girls started crawling, I stopped leaving them alone as I deemed it dangerous.
But when Ellen was six and Elise five, I started leaving them again, for up to an hour at a time, sometimes alone, sometimes together. I was sick of dragging them places they didn’t want to go.
Ellen hated getting in the car just to go to Elise’s ballet lesson. Elise loathed being dragged away from a favourite TV programme to watch Ellen swim or play the recorder. It was torture for everyone.
Their school seemed less understanding about me leaving them unwatched, however. I once got a grilling from the secretary on my bathing habits. I used to tell the children to tell anyone who called I was “in the bath” when I was out.
‘You enjoy a very long soak, Mrs Cunningham,’ she said tartly. ‘I rang a couple of times yesterday and Ellen told me you were in the bath.’
Did I feel guilty? Not one bit. Though the school obviously had me down as a terrible mother, I never thought it wrong to leave them. And, despite the fact that what I did may now be deemed a criminal offence, I still don’t.
We’d had long talks about the dangers of matches and boiling water. The girls knew not to make cups of tea without adult supervision.
I instructed them not to answer the door and to tell anyone phoning that I was in the bath. I felt totally confident they were safe.
Never once did they beg me not to leave them. They enjoyed the responsibility and the freedom.
I also used to let them cycle around our local streets from the age of around six. Do we want to arrest parents who give their children that freedom too?
Far from being a criminal, I helped my girls - who are now 21 and 23 - become more responsible, confident and independent. And that’s what parenting is all about.’
I made the same mistake as the poor mccanns
Quentin Letts, father of three
A criminal record for leaving a six-year-old alone for 45 minutes? That seems ridiculously harsh, if not a downright intrusion by officialdom in matters best left to parents.
But maybe I say that because I am a man. We fathers may not be programmed biologically to fret quite so much about leaving our offspring alone - though perhaps we should be.
On a family holiday to Ibiza about 15 years ago, I persuaded my wife Lois to leave our two children, Eveleen, then aged around two, and Claud, three, asleep in our self-catering apartment while we had a candlelit dinner alone on the far side of the holiday complex.
From our restaurant table, we could just about see the apartment across the swimming pool. Or so I claimed.
Lois agreed reluctantly but was twitchy throughout dinner.
‘Shall I just go and check on the children?’ she kept asking. ‘Do you think they’re okay?’
Happily pouring her a second glass of Rioja, I told her not to worry and thought she was just being a fusspot. I wanted dinner with my beautiful wife without the interruption of screaming toddlers.
A few years later, however, the poor McCanns lost their daughter Madeleine and I felt a swine for the way I had behaved.
Has my view on leaving children unattended changed since then? I suppose it has, as far as really tiny tots go. I would not now be happy leaving a three-year-old in an apartment while I sauntered off to supper.
But Lois and I still have disagreements: I would leave our 11-year-old, Honor (the youngest) in the house alone for half an hour. Lois hesitates at that.
Yet even after my change of mind, I would hate politicians to set a law about what age children can be left unguarded. Parents must be allowed to decide these things for themselves. I suspect that the ghastly misfortune of the McCanns (whom I do not in any way criticise) changed many people’s attitudes.
We have learned not to be so trusting of the world - and that will probably prove more effective than any law.’
My four year old vanished while I popped out
Anne Atkins, mother of five
The afternoon I left my four-year-old remains one of the worst moments of my life.
It was a rainy afternoon in late 2007 and I was at our sweet little cottage, in an idyllic Oxfordshire village where everyone knew everyone, playing with Rosie, our youngest - a happy and confident girl who could entertain herself for hours.
Then my 20-year-old son, Alexander, rang, asking me to fax him the week’s hymns from the local church, where he played the organ, so that he could practise.
The church was just 100 yards away, but the rain was torrential. If I took Rosie, we would both be soaked. It would be no fun for her, and if I took her with me it would take me longer.
So I explained to her that I was going to run to the church, grab the hymn book and run back. I knew it wasn’t illegal and I would only be minutes. She was quite content, occupying herself happily as she always did, with crayons and paper.
Unusually, however, the church was locked. The woman who kept the key lived over the road and was so slow answering the door, and then fetching the key.
Then I had to run to the church, unlock the heavy oak door, retrieve the music, return the key to the woman over the road and run back up to my cottage… which was empty.
‘No, no, NO!’ I screamed. I searched the house, frantic. Rosie was nowhere - not asleep, not in a cupboard. I shouted her name and wept wildly.
I telephoned all our neighbours but got no answer from anyone. Then I called my husband, shouting: ‘Help me!’ and asking if I should call the police.
In despair, I ran to the cottage next door, with very little hope that they’d be in.
And there was Rosie, merrily playing with their two teenage daughters. She’d trundled round when she got bored waiting for me to return, and they hadn’t answered the phone because the teenagers were home alone, too.
That day taught me the utter unpredictability of leaving young children, and the total devastation that one momentary lapse in parenting can cause.
But it also taught me that all parents must make their own judgment calls. That is how we learn.
So while this case suggests that I, too, could have been prosecuted for my actions that day, had I called the police, I know how futile such prosecution would have been.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, and that empty cottage was all the warning I needed never to leave my darling girl alone again.’
14 is too young to babysit
Clover Stroud, mother of four
Last Friday, my husband and I had to cancel a much-anticipated evening out with friends because I couldn’t find a babysitter. Instead, I settled down grumpily to watch a DVD, my party dress discarded on the bed.
Was I being too cautious? After all, my eldest son, Jimmy, is 14, so I’m legally entitled to leave him alone to babysit his younger siblings: Dolly, 11, Evangeline, two, and Dash, six months.
But while I’m within my legal rights, the idea of leaving my children alone isn’t something I could contemplate. The law may be vague but maternal instinct is not - or at least, it should not be.
Had I gone out and left them, the children would likely have been absolutely fine, but it’s not a gamble that I’d ever take. An accident can happen within seconds.
Do I let them play out alone? Only when they’re older, and only somewhere I can see them at all times.
A mother’s role is to look after her children at all times, even if that (frequently) means putting her needs behind theirs.
I wouldn’t dream of leaving a six-year-old alone like this mother did, and I applaud MP John Hemming’s call for greater legal clarity around the age when children can be left alone.
For most of us, a mother’s instinct guides our parenting. But sometimes it seems that instinct is absent, or overwhelmed by the pressures of daily life - and in such situations what counts is not protecting a mother from prosecution but protecting a child from harm.’
His scared little face haunts me
Virginia Ironside, mother of one
I still find it hard to forgive myself for the three minutes I left my son alone more than three decades ago. He was five years old and had refused to put his coat on to go outside.
In a rare fit of exasperation, I slammed the front door, popped to the corner shop and returned home to find him sitting on the steps sobbing his heart out.
The sight of his distress at my abandoning him has never left me, and I still wake tormented by my behaviour, 35 years on.
The experience taught me that there’s only one way of judging whether a child should be alone - and that is how they feel about it.
A rule of thumb should be never to leave a child who doesn’t want to be left, however old they are. Better to be around all the time till they’re 16 than risk them getting frightened or hurt.
And the only person who knows how a child feels is their parents - not the police.
Introducing legislation into this area of family life risks undermining the judgment and understanding that lies at the heart of parenting.
Every day, parents let their children out of their sight for some time - whether that be to go to the bathroom upstairs, play in the garden or walk down the street to meet friends.
How could a law say how long a child can be left inside and not outside? It would raise the ludicrous idea of a law governing inside the home but not outdoors.
A law is also too inflexible for something so dependent on circumstance. If a mother left her young daughter to attend an emergency with another child, would that be illegal? If a mother left an immature 14-year-old overnight – but asked a neighbour to pop in twice - would that be acceptable?
So while I remain wracked with guilt, I am also relieved the law about leaving children remains so grey. After all, parenting is never black and white.’
I won’t leave my 16-year-old overnight
Angela Epstein, mother of four
My four-day holiday to Israel this week very nearly never happened, as I worried what to do with my son - who couldn’t miss school and is too young and too vulnerable to be left in an empty house.
My son’s age? He’s 16.
For while friends muttered ‘Just leave him in - you’re only away for a few days’, I still think 16 too tender an age to be home on your own overnight.
Of course, it would suit my lifestyle better to fly off without a thought for him, but when I became a parent I signed up to decades of responsibility - and in my book, being responsible means being there for your children. At all times.
I only went on the break with my husband when my eldest son, who’s 20, agreed to return from university.
That is why I believe parents who leave young children - those under the age of 14 - at home by themselves, for any length of time, day or night, should be prosecuted.
To me, doing so is tantamount to neglect and deserves the same criminal consideration.
I don’t let my ten-year-old daughter walk or cycle anywhere by herself - not even around the corner to see her friend who lives in the next street. And my son is never alone outside daylight hours, and never at night.
Not least because while no wimp - he’s climbed mountains, camped in harsh weather - he admits he doesn’t like sleeping in the house when everyone is away. As he once said: ‘It’s like it has lost its heart - and its blooming spooky.’
Our detached, six-bedroom house is lovely when it pulses with family life, but it’s cold and cavernous when no one’s home. What if our temperamental burglar alarm starts shrieking? Or a wretched power cut creates pitch darkness?
I should not be allowed - and nor should any parent - to put a child through any such fear or risk. Our default position as parent is protector-in-chief and we can’t renege on that just because it’s inconvenient.
The general rule about leaving young children alone is ‘Don’t do it’. However mature your child may seem, most under-eights simply don’t have the cognitive ability to predict danger or assess risk. What is ‘sensible’ to an adult, won’t be ‘sensible’ to many six-year-olds.
Leaving a child at home on their own can also make them scared and vulnerable if they’re not completely comfortable with it. Sometimes they become anxious, and are likely to start attention-seeking upon parents’ return.
But children also love being given independence, and freedom is important for their development. They need to play outside on their own and be left without adult supervision for short periods.
That is why when my two daughters were aged four or five I happily left them in the house for five minutes at a time. I would pop to the neighbour’s house to pick up a parcel or hang out the washing. Each time, I’d tell my girls where I was going and give them clear rules.
As they got older, I’d leave them for longer periods and now they are 11 and 12 I’m happy for them to catch the bus to school with their friends. They can stay home alone for a couple of hours in daylight.
Of course, this is completely different from leaving a six-year-old for an hour while I go shopping in town - which I would never have done. Six-year-olds might seem like mini adults, but they’re not. They are children and lacking in intellectual development.
That doesn’t make legislation wise, however, as it’s impossible to pinpoint a safe age to leave a child since all children are different. We need to concentrate instead on ensuring parents develop children’s trust and responsibility in small steps.
Daily Mail