Latch keys versus the nanny state

Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday August 14, 2014


When you’re an immigrant kid, the latch key becomes part of your uniform. From the age of 8 the front door key hung from a length of string around my neck. I was a latch key kid, but then so was half the class so no-one thought it unusual. We all had mothers and fathers working furiously to gather together home and food and create a future.

After school I’d walk home, make maybe a slice of bread and jam, and if it was a good day, I had enough to see a film at the local flea-pit. We couldn’t afford a TV yet.

Growing up like this gave me confidence and independence. Once I got a bike I really flew. Yet I am now reading that here in Victoria today, my parents would be thrown in jail and fined $3600. For leaving a child under 16 unattended!

Is this the nanny state gone mad? How are hard-working parents also expected to “not neglect” their child?

Send them to day care. But where? You can’t put a 12 year old in a creche. After school activities are fine - during the school term. But what about all those school holidays?

Perhaps this is another marketing opportunity. After all, a function of successful business is to find niches in the marketplace and provide the suitable, properly-priced answer.

Well pre-school care has already turned into a multi-million dollar industry with child places collecting as much as $120 per child per day. Don’t forget that Eddie Groves rose to $2 billion in wealth before his shaky management came tumbling down. But it wasn’t the fault of the centres - many of them were just sold elsewhere and continue to do business.

Ten years ago Roxanne and Mark Elliott felt utterly confused by their choices - and lack of choices - in the care for their child. After amassing a truck of information solving their own problem, they formed a child care resource for providers and parents to find each other, called Care for Kids. Now it receives more than 200,000 enquiries per month.

So yes the need is there. But Australia is at or near the bottom of all the UNICEF tables on childcare, and while our governments - state and Federal - are happy enough to jail those who don’t use childcare, they are not about to provide it. They no doubt see this as a business incentive.

Those 5 to 15s are provided well enough by summer camps and seasonal diversions but what about the afternoon hours waiting for mum’s arrival, or in the gaps between school and camp? Well put your thinking cap on because the market is there. All it needs is someone with the right answers.

Of course for every family, the universal baby sitter is the tv set. Kids still watch sit-coms from the 1960s and 70s, and perhaps don’t even realise they are watching their parents’ infant amusement.

The jokes haven’t improved.

Between that and the Xbox they stay occupied for hours. Sometimes even managing a bit of homework. But does the time spent alone count as neglect? Can you be charged with leaving a child unattended in possession of Wii?

It makes one wonder who dreams up these laws without a thought for the consequences - but wait a minute, aren’t our governments meant to think this through or debate them in Parliament? I seem to remember voting so I could have a say, but no-one asked me if I’d agree to making half the parents in the country potential felons.

Maybe we’d better hurry up building the teen creches.