A blogging buddy has expatiated on the failings of the parents of the child abducted in Portugal:
Well I've been thinking about this.
Initially I was a tad surprised that these tots had been left while their parents had dinner out, but it would appear that they were never more than 100yds away, could see the place where their children slept at all times, and checked up on them every 30 minutes. Stuart asks 'would you have done that?'.
I have had Felix asleep in his pram in my orchard while I've been working elsewhere in the garden, or in my polytunnel with R4 on. I've had toddlers asleep upstairs while I've been out of sight of the house 100yds away watering my seed or vegetable beds in the late evening. I've left children asleep in the house while I've been outside in the early hours clearing up after the birth of a foal in my paddock. In times gone by I've left my very own Madeleine asleep in her pram in the garden while I've washed and dried my hair or painted the sitting room or spent 30 minutes answering a work-related telephone call.
So the probability is that yes, I might have done exactly what little Madeleine McGann's parents did.
I could say that it's safer where I live, more remote, few strangers, few passers-by - but then wouldn't that make it easier for someone to creep in unseen? Or are children safer where there are no crowds for danger to lurk and hide? Would we think that in a staffed hotel where people are constantly passing by, close to a busy bistro, in a place kept within our sight at all times, that they would be safer from interference by strangers?
In my opinion, these parents didn't neglect their children and to imply that their absence from the immediate environs where the children slept somehow makes them implicit by neglect of their parental duty in the abduction of their daughter is flawed.
Children have been stolen away from packed youth hostel bunk rooms, from their mother's side in shopping centres, from their bedrooms and from their bedtime baths while their parents were within 12' of them. So it would seem that if some warped individual wants to steal away a child then eventually they will succeed.
It sounds defeatist I know. But to widen the point, to make absolutely sure that no child can ever be stolen away would require parents and children to be shackled to each other. No-one can live like that and should parents try then they would be an infliction on and an affliction to their children and their children to them. In my opinion modern children are already socially damaged by the restrictions placed on their freedom to 'play out' as we did - are we to deny them the right to be alone too?
Finally, I can't relate to the notion Stuart expounds that adult pursuits ought to be put aside until one's children are themselves adult. Children are part of our lives - a very important part yes - but not the whole of it. In my opinion people who maintain their interests and passions make better, more inspiring and more interesting parents. Parenting isn't just about babysitting. And life goes on when children have gone.
