A harsh lesson for all parents

9:20am Wednesday 30th April 2008

IT HAS been a year since little Madeleine McCann went missing on a family holiday in Portugal.

So what have we, as parents, learned in that 12 months?

Gerry and Kate McCann have probably learned more than anyone about the nasty underbelly of public opinion and of how the standards of policing we accept in this country are not necessarily transferable abroad.

But most of all, they have discovered the "if only" price anyone can pay for a laid-back decision made when we are at our most relaxed: on holiday.

Only this week, in a TV documentary, they say they would have used a baby listening service if it had been available. Instead, they relied on a system of checking their children every half hour while they dined with friends.

Their words are bound to be in the minds of parents and grandparents holidaying this year with young children, and may provide a timely salutary warning.

In the past couple of decades, parenting has become a very hands-off affair. We have been encouraged to listen to our children's demands, accounts of peer pressure and to the PC brigade, and taken a step back from decisions that used to be automatic.

These related to the rules by which families were run. Yes, it used to be almost as military as it sounds, but it was seldom short of love because of it.

Children were generally not left to their own devices for any length of time because it was thought they were not sufficiently developed to make sensible decisions. So the majority of parents knew where their children were almost all the time.

Admittedly, the streets were generally safer, and children didn't own expensive mobile phones or other hi-tech equipment so they weren't worth mugging. But parents were much more involved with their children and their lives because they wanted to be.

These days, many parents seem to feel they have the "right" to their own life, and if children get in the way, well, tough. As a result, youngsters roam the streets unchecked even by a basic set of values instilled at home.

This summer, I suspect many parents will make more structured decisions about their holiday childcare, and will want to know their youngsters' whereabouts as a matter of routine.

Sadly, it won't stop children being snatched by the predatory and perverted, but it will make it more difficult.

And this return to real parenting may even prove a positive step in the direction of more responsible families.

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