Latchkey kids - were you ever one?

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....

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.

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.

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).

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

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,

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

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 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.

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 , the key was on a shelf in the shed.
There was always a list of shopping to get, but oddly, no money, I had to go to my mums place of work to get that, and then take her back the change.
Then, like many of you, I had to start supper, peel potatoes, start frying sausages, nothing too complicated.
I didn’t really like being in my own, and I have no idea where my brother was.

Yes definitely, my memory is blurred as to when that actually began, my mother had a part time job in the office of a nearby prep school, I think that was infant/early juniors, so she was home for us after school and the school holidays, she was always worried we'd kill each other because we were prone to having epic arguments and throwing hard toys at each other. Sometime, certainly before I left juniors she started working full time for an insurance company, my memories are vague as to what happened, I think there was a key under a brick somewhere., our next door neighbour was a kind lady who we knew we could always go to her if there was a problem. When we came home before mum arrived, I remember the culinary delicacy known as beans on toast figured pretty often. Like many of my generation we grew up without central heating, my parents spent much time faffing around in a grate in the dining room to get the fire started, they didn't trust us to do that, particularly after my brother thought it would be amusing load to put a load of conkers on it on one occasion and they pinged and exploded around the room in an alarming manner Somewhere along the line my paternal grandfather died and my parents bought a larger house so grandma could come and live with us, she died a couple of years later. When she was around though I remember ascending into a pudding heaven, she made us lots of delicious home made things like fruit pies, steamed sponges with jam which my mum didn't really have the time for, except at the weekends, once work took over.

It was only with great reluctance that my father "allowed" my mother to work. In those days it was regarded as a disgrace for a man not to be able to provide for his family adequately.

As soon as I left school and began work he made her stop. I was treated like a cash machine. Press a button and money pops out.

I left my first job where I was paid in cash and got one (local authority) where I was paid by bank transfer. My parents never knew how much I earned because I had all my statements and post sent to an accommodation address. My father was quite hostile becase I had a cheque book! Only "posh" people had bank accounts and cheque books back then.

No, yet my Mum always worked.
I don't know how she did it although she did take me with her when I was very small. I had older siblings so they were there although they'd left home by the time I was about eight.

The first time I was left on my own I was about 10 and my mother went into town without me. I felt very grownup.

I think the 1950s stay-at-home housewife may have been a myth!

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!

I did and I loved it! It gave me a bit of space on my own. I tended not to go out to play because I loved the peace & quiet, but if I did play out, it was in a community where everyone was watching out for each other and the kids.

Yes, from around 7 or 8. We did not have electricity, it was a gas mantle and my father popped in from his work minutes from our house to set it alight. He finished work around 5 pm and my mother, a ward sister worked shifts in the hospital across the road.

I cannot remember when electricity was installed but I was born in 1943 so it would have been at the start of 1950 I was a latch key kid.

From the age of 9I would let myself into the house and prepare vegetables for dinner and pop whatever Mum had left for dinner into the oven.
Saturday mornings were spent helping with household chores.
I never found anything strange about this. I had a wonderful childhood with very loving parents.

My mum worked though she wouldn't have had to if my father hadn't kept so much for himself....I put myself and sister out to school...Poor mum made sure we had everything for school before she left.....Mum got a lunch break and dashed home and prepared the evening dinner.... My sister and I would have a "piece on jam" and do our homework till mum got home at 4.45pm....I'd have potatoes & veg all cooked....Never thought anything of it...In later life my mum used to say I was always such a help to her....

No my mum and dad both worked full time long hours those days but Nan was always there for me Nan ran a small Guest house in her home so there was plenty of time to meet me out of school before preparing tea for the guests

Yes from early age, key on a piece of string behind the letterbox !!!

No. My mother was always there when I got in from school, and I was always in when my children did. I thought the conversations after school were important..

My mum didn't work until I was about 11, but her job started when I went out to school in the morning, and finished at 3.30 so that she was at home when I got home.

No, mum helped dad on our smallholding, so didn’t go out to work. Always there when we got off the school bus, with tea cooking ready for us.

yes from a very young age. I mind being 6 and my sister 7 when we stayed with grandparents for 2 weeks over the school summer holidays. Both my grandparents worked, we walked my gran to work for 8am and then went and amused ourselves until we went back for her at 4pm. door was never locked, toilet was outside anyway. We use to swim in the river and cross the train tracks to play with other kids.
My dad worked shifts and during from the time I was about 11 and my wee brother 6 I was responsible for him either before or after school depending on my dads shift. I use to take him to /from school, cook tea and feed us all, and do anything else that needed doing. Never entered my head to feel I was hard done by, that was just the way it was.