ARGENTINA: The Growing Number of Latchkey Kids

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 17 2000 (IPS) - As more and more members of Argentina’s once-large middle-class fall below the poverty line, increasing numbers of women and grandparents are forced into the labour market, and no one is home to take care of the children after school.

According to a study carried out by the government of the city of Buenos Aires, 66 percent of public school students between the ages of nine and 11 prepare their own lunches, as do 80.3 percent of 12 to 14-year-olds.

“Luckily it’s my sister’s turn today,” Victoria, 12, told IPS.

“I fix sausages, hamburgers, sandwiches,” says Victoria’s 10- year-old sister, unwittingly confirming the study’s conclusions on the poor nutritional value of the food prepared by latchkey kids.

Buenos Aires under-secretary of food security, Guillermo Guido, said that not only is the enormous proportion of kids who prepare their own meals alarming, but so is what they are eating.

Of the kids that cook — more girls do so than boys — most of those interviewed said they prepared hamburgers or sausages (40.4 percent), while 28.4 percent opted for a simple sandwich. Eggs, chicken, pasta or fish were mentioned in far lower proportions.

Victoria and her sister take turns cooking and washing the dishes. “Sometimes we fight because she makes a big mess when she cooks,” says Victoria. And on their way home from school, they often have to remember to buy an ingredient they need to fix lunch.

The fights sometimes end in blows, the girls admit. “If she doesn’t listen to me, I call my mom at work, but she doesn’t want us to call her about silly things,” said Victoria, who is resigned to playing the role of substitute mother for a few hours every day.

In Argentina, public schools run on a double-shift, so kids end up spending only the morning or the afternoon in school — and hours alone at home if their parents work full-time.

Psychologists and sociologists who specialise in family affairs point to a number of factors leading to the boom in the number of children who spend time at home alone every day in Argentina.

In first place, the extended family, traditionally close-knit in this nation of European immigrants who came mainly from Italy and Spain, with a strong dose of indigenous influence in some parts of the country, is weakening and giving way to the nuclear family, especially in large cities.

Furthermore, both grandparents and parents usually work today. Growing poverty, which already affects one-third of this Southern Cone country’s 37 million people, and declining incomes have pushed more adults into the labour market, with families unable to afford a nanny or baby-sitter to take care of the children.

The problem is just one aspect of the generalised decline of Argentina’s middle-class, many of whose members now make up the category of the “new poor” or the “income poor” — families who might own their own homes, and who continue to identify themselves as middle-class, but whose income level puts them below the poverty line.

Surveys also indicate that in the past 10 years, the proportion of female heads of household — in which the mother represents the family’s main or sole economic support — has ballooned from six to 27 percent in the city of Buenos Aires. In many cases, the father is present, but unemployed. In other cases, he does not live with the family.

Children can be alone at home if they know there is an adult who loves them and is available to take care of them — in other words, if they have emotional support and security, said psychologist Susana Toporosi, who coordinates the area of adolescent psychopathology in the Buenos Aires Children’s Hospital.

“Only in those conditions will they not feel lonely,” said Toporosi, who said that this generally occurs between the ages of eight and 10 in middle-class urban homes.

But, she stressed, that does not mean youngsters should be burdened with the responsibility of cooking, cleaning or taking care of younger siblings.

That situation, which is generally not a question of choice for parents, overburdens children with duties that compromise their performance at school, and leads younger siblings, in the care of their older brothers and sisters, to act childishly and suffer from a lack of motivation, said Toporosi.

The psychologist added that children at home alone are at risk of being hurt or killed in accidents. Burns, poisoning, cuts and falls are among the most common, and help is sometimes late in arriving if the kids have to call their parents at work or turn to a neighbour.

Another disturbing aspect of the growing trend of latchkey children is the increasing number of hours spent in front of the TV. A study conducted last year by the children’s cable TV station Nickelodeon found that youngsters aged seven to 12 in this city of 10 million spent one to four hours watching TV.

But the most novel aspect of the phenomenon is that 46 percent of the children interviewed said they had a TV set in their own bedrooms, which not only makes it difficult to control the amount of time youngsters spend watching TV, but also reduces the time spent together as a family.

Like many parents, Victoria’s mother sees the TV set as company for her daughters, and as a safeguard that keeps them off the street and not fighting among themselves. “I prefer to have them watching TV,” said the girls’ mother, who has resigned herself to the “lesser evil.”