The Politics of Home Alone

When is it okay to leave a child unattended? This surprisingly simple question has some complex answers that change with the decades.

We were never left unattended at home in the 1980s and 1990s. Not for a minute. But we had a lot more freedom than a 2020s child has. There was no way to track our movements, so we would roam freely around our neighbourhood after school until the evening meal, and afterwards in summer until bedtime, and all day on a Saturday. Nobody knew where we were, …