Latchkey kids - were you ever one?

I was the youngest of 4 and Mum always worked, we needed the money. To begin with after school, my job was to lay the table for tea time ( no ‘dinner’ in our house). As we grew up my jobs progressed to lighting the coal fire, preparing veg, and finally the cooking.
I can’t say I was a latchkey kid as our house door was never locked. We lived in a wee village and I remember a grocery van came mid week. Mum would leave a ‘message bag’ inside the door and the grocery van man would open the door to get the bag, fill out the grocery order (a handwritten list) and pop it back in the house. The van would come again on Saturday and mum would get anything else she needed and pay the bill.
Happy days.

And yet no provision is in place for childcare, other than when they are very small...
Nothing to help me when my boy was 10.

I don't think it counts if you were secondary school to be honest.
I was.
I loved it.

Hithere

How times have changed

Latchkey behaviour now is asking for trouble (safety wise), even illegal in some states in the US.

You would have child services at your door in no time if this was done today

Yes I agree, there are a plethora of after school clubs around now, simply unknown when I was growing up. I don't remember the term "child minder" either, maybe relatives would step in from time time if that were at all possible. Of course if you were really posh there would have been a nanny who probably lived in.

It wasn't unusual to be a latch key kid when I was growing up. There existed, what would be deemed today a benign neglect of children. Memories, include going off for the entire day in the school holidays at a pretty young age without the means to message parents as to where you were. I wouldn't have been happy for my children to have been left unsupervised at the age that I and many of my peers were. Of course there was the occasional abductions and tragedies but I think generally the world was safer then or perhaps that's my perception looking back through rose tinted spectacles. One school of thought is that we were far more independent from being less cossetted,

May I ask what you mean by benign neglect?

I was asked by my mother to go and play on the street with the neighbourhood kids for 6+ hours, unsupervised, with a ball that would go to a 4 lane and very busy road, next to a club known for prostitution..
We even knew the owner and we saw that club when empty because we were curious

My widowed mother had no option but to work full time so once I left nursery and started school I had a key around my neck which I lost more than once. In winter I put a match to the fire, read, listened to Children’s Hour and laid the table for supper. Hideously dangerous really, and my own children were fifteen and fourteen before they got home before me. Autres temps, autres moeurs ( not sure of spelling and autocorrect keeps trying to change it).

My recollection of growing up was one of not being in a child centered world. For example, this would no doubt be illegal now, my parents at Christmas would go to Midnight Mass, we were expected to go with them as children. One year aged about 7 or 8 I'd gone to bed and wouldn't be roused so they went off probably for an hour and a half leaving me on my own. I looked back on that when I became a parent with a bit of a shudder, I would nevet have left one of mine in the middle of night unattended. Different days, different attitudes.

Different days, different attitudes.
They were, and I don't think it's sensible to compare them as though they are directly comparable.

I wasn't a 'latchkey child'. My mum didn't work, as my father didn't think it was the 'done thing'. There were no nurseries or childminders, and my grandmother wouldn't have helped her, so it would have been really difficult. Also, my grandad wouldn't let my mum go to university - she had to leave school and go to secretarial college, so she wouldn't have earned a lot anyway in the days when women were paid less than men.

It meant that we grew up without a lot of money, which would have been ok if my mum hadn't resented it so much. She would have liked to have a profession, felt trapped in a life of cooking and cleaning, and was probably bored with looking after children. She was clearly unhappy, and my sister and I had pretty miserable childhoods. I would much rather have had a key to let myself in than be resented so much, and guess that if we'd had more independence as children (and if my mum had had a life outside of the house) she would have been less controlling when we were teens and young adults. We were her 'job' in her eyes, and she didn't want to give it up.

We were sent out to play for hours though, and when my brother was born and I was 7, I would often have to push him up and down the street in his pram. I took my 5 year old sister to school, too, when my brother was a baby and it was too much for my mum. It was obviously the need for 'respectability' that meant she didn't work, rather than a burning desire to be around her children.

Nannee49

Yes and never really gave it a moment's thought.

Though it sounds completely Victorian, because I was the first home it was my job to make the fire. I can still do a mean paper, wood, coal layer up.

There was only one time really when things went a bit wrong - my dad had made a 'blower', a sheet of metal roughly the size of the fireplace aperture to help the flames draw. I used to help it along by laying a sheet of the News of the World, a broadsheet in those far off days, on top of it. Unfortunately, I had taken to reading the salacious articles and was that engrossed in reading the scandal I didn't notice the flames leaping up until it was nearly too late.

Fortunately, I lived to tell the tale and thought all my Christmases had come at once when the Aged P's invested in a gas poker.

My career as a firestarter came to an end in 1965 when they swapped the gas poker for a gas fire - bliss!

frightening....

I wasnt a 'latchkey' kid, but my mum was. She used to tell me about walking home from school to make the tea at 8 years old ( 1930s ) i was horrified but my mum just shrugged her shoulders and said thats how it was.

I asked, horrified, what did she make ? Her reply was anything that was on the cellar steps.

CELLAR STEPS !!
NO FRIDGE !!


Her mum and dad ( my gran and grandad) were farmers.

Not at Junior school as my mum taught at my school so we waited until she was ready before coming home.
I did have a door key once I went to high school and was expected to have started the tea and done any other chores - putting washing away eg - by the time mum got home.

I taught across the road from my house so my children collected the front door key from me and went home by themselves aged 9 and 10. I could see the house from my classroom window and got home asap after school. They enjoyed being 'responsible'.

Nanne49 I remember the Blower very well!!! I was a latchkey child and yes I had to light the fire when I got home.

My dad had made this heavy steel shovel and I would have to put paper up to it to cause the draught, sometimes my dad would be there and I rem him sayng one time "keep your eye on that paper" Well of course the obvious happened!! the little brown scorch mark started to apear and I wasnt quick enough to scrunch the paper up to put it out, the next thing "WHAM"! Yes a real smack acros the back of my head! Im 66 now and remember it as it was yesterday and yes ! you do actualy see stars!

I wasn’t expected to light the fire, but we didn’t have any other form of heating, so I’m sure I was cold.
I wasn’t supposed to leave the house once I’d done the shopping, and was severely punished for visiting a friend and lying about it.
I was thinking I must have been in senior school, but this girl was only at junior school with me, so I’m guessing I was about ten.

Oh bikergran it's rotten you got a clout for your fire making efforts, I was on my own so luckily had the chance to clear away any evidence of burning the house down.

And so glad you had a Blower too. We were clearly ahead of the curve in technology even if lacking in attention

Lol Nannee49 yes it is , but I got much better when I joined the Girl Guides lol.

Yes it was a very different way of life then.

I can clearly remember going off for hours, sometimes alone, sometimes with other kids. So long as you were home for "tea" there was never any question of the parents having been neglectful. Children routinely played in the street or around the area and no one thought anything of it.

Also parents did not interfere in the friendships and fall outs as you so often hear of on mumsnet. Nor were they constantly over at the school arguing with teachers. My father would certainly not have lost a days wages to go to the school on my account and my mother would have felt intmidated by middle class educated women.

I do believe we grew up to be more informed and independent than children today. There were many unspoken rules about fairness/unfairness and basic manners that we learned from other children and the way in which we approached their parents. We also learned to manage out own social relationships without helecopter parents hovering to make sure we were not bullied or excluded.

My parents started work at 7am which meant from the age of 5 getting myself to school. My brother was 9years older than me but he went to “big” school in another town and had to leave very early. Our door was never locked. Everyone looked out for everyone else. I was always fiercely independent which has carried on throughout my life. Different times now - I can’t believe how many teenage kids are driven to school locally - it would be a 15 to 20min walk for them. The primary schools are mostly a 10minute walk. I spent all school holidays at home by myself when my parents were at work. The only had two weeks off a year. I survived and look back fondly at my childhood.

Another latchkey kid here. In ‘my world’ the women and girls did everything too. Don’t remember my brother having to do any chores. It was expected and you’d get a clout if you dared to argue!

I also remember my parents going to the pub for what seemed like hours whilst we had to stay in the car and wait for them. If we were lucky we’d get a bottle of pop (usually cherryade) and a bag of crisps.

I could go on… but I won’t! Thank goodness times have changed!

Mum had to work full time, divorced with very little from my father. From age 7/8 (J1 class at school) I would let myself in with the key on a string. The next door neighbour was supposed to keep an eye on me, but with 5 of her own I just got on with what I wanted to do.
To get to and from school (on my own) I had to walk to the bus stop and cross a busy main road with a 20 min bus ride. I used to do the veg and start the evening meal too.
By the time I was 9 or 10, I was doing most of the shopping- dispatched to the co-op (10 min walk, crossing the busy main road) with 2 10 shilling notes (don’t loose the change!). Negotiating with the butcher about the weekend joint, then lugging it all back up the hill home.

I was a latch -key kid in the late forties in East London. Key to the front door to our multiple occupied house on a piece of tape around my neck.

I would get home from (primary) school about one to one and a half hours before my Mum,. I had no duties to do at home, just let myself in, go up the many flights of stairs to where we lived in the attic, and (usually - read a book. At the other end of the day I would get myself off to school after both parents had left for work.

During the school holidays, would be left by myself. Back then, so many of us LKK's that the local authority used to arrange for one school to provide school dinners for us during the holidays and I would take myself to these.

During long summer breaks, I was sent away to a holiday school in Bexhill - which absolutely loved.

. I didn’t do any household chores.My mother said that she wasn’t able to make my elder brother do anything, and she wasn’t having me doing them just because I was a girl.

School, homework and reading were sacred, though.

I was not a latch key child as my mother worked in a school so was always home about the same time as us.My father was often out of work though so was n the house when we were.
My late DH was a latch key child from the day he started school at 5 years old.His mother got a job and he said she hung the door key round his neck every morning so he could let himself into the house and wait until his older sister got in from school about half an hour later. She would then make the tea before their mother came in.
Our own two children always had one of us at home when at school as we worked opposite shifts.We planned it like this as DH said he did not want his children to come home to a cold empty house like he had to do.

When I read this I realise how easy our children have had it. Even my grandchildren don’t know how good they’ve got it hand out money in! Hardly the best way but hey ho!

Children in newer generations do NOT have it any easier - challenges are different.

No, my mum didn’t work was always there when I came home from school