Would parents today send children away in a wartime evacuation?

[Rainallnight]

If there was another evacuation of children out of the cities, would you send yours?

I’m reading Goodnight Mister Tom to DD and of course it’s thrown up all sorts of chat about evacuees.

DD asked if I’d send her to the countryside and my first reaction was that I definitely wouldn’t. But then I thought, would anyone? People are much less biddable these days, have a different view of parenting and childhood, along with safeguarding etc.

I know the scenario is unlikely to arise given how different modern warfare is still interested in asking!

My nana went with her mum to her mum's sister and lived there, but she was only a tiny baby (born May 1939). I think that would be what I would choose, even if we ended up all sharing a room for years.

As OP says, it is pretty irrelevant these days anyway. No reason why Harrogate or Merthyr Tydfil would be any safer than London. Blackouts aren't going to hide us now.

Parents didn't want to be separated from their children in most cases, but families who would take a child in wouldn't take their parents too for more than a few weeks - there wouldn't be jobs or housing for the entire family unless they were wealthy enough to pay a premium.

@chedderland if you/I had tanks on our streets and roving bands of soldiers using rape as a weapon, and our food was being exported to feed the invading army and keep the invading power going, and we were on theoretical rations that rarely materialised, and you got an offer for your children to go to (eg) relatives in Ireland or France where at least they would eat? I might.

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is a book that’s supposed to be about a boy who made a wind generator in Africa using very limited textbooks and resources. But in the middle is a description of what it is like to live through a famine as a young growing lad. And I imagined what it is like to hear your children literally weeping from hunger every night.

Tbh my mum lasted two days as an evacuee, she cried constantly and got taken back. My MIL was evacuated for 3 years and I think it had a lifelong effect on her. But so would have being bombed.

No. Like virtually everyone else in the UK I’m too sheltered to be able to comprehend a situation where that would be a genuine scenario.

I’m sure nobody on here is judging anyone who does send their child away as our forebears did, or the German Jews, or a mother in a country where there are no prospects. We can’t comprehend a life over death scenario as we are very coddled.

I’m sure everyone thinks they wouldn’t marry off their teenage daughter against her will or other decisions that struggling people have to make.

If you could.

The Kindertransport was full of children who would never see their parents again. The parents had no way to accompany their children.

These days I'd be lucky enough to be able to send DS to my sister's farm in rural Wales, so yes.
My parents grew up in bomb alley in Kent during the war. My mother's mother refused to send her away and she wouldn't have wanted to go.
Father was shipped off to Wales and suffered horribly.

I think that we are a lot less trusting of strangers with our children now which is why we have things like DBS. There must have been abuse going on in some cases with evacuated children.

I think that we'd be a lot more resistant to doing this but it might be accepted as a least worst last resort.

Some would and some wouldnt. There were afghan women sending their daughters over the border whilst they still could, only recently. They want their children to be safe and dont see a possibly way to go themselves.

Some families flee war to safe places together. Locally we have given safe asylum to some ukrainian and syrian families as a whole.

If uk was in war and my area became dangerous i would prefer ti flee as a family to seek asylum. I hope to god that id be welcomed..

My gran was evacuated with her sister. They were then sent to a sanitorium where her sister died. When my gran got back home after the war her mother had remarried and started a new family, my gran essentially became the servant.
Very sad.

Up the age of 5, mothers were evacuated with their children in WW2 and with the general change of knowing how vulnerable older children are I suspect it would include a parent now. Like how kids used to get sent off at super young ages to boarding school and are now generally older (thank goodness).

My mum and her siblings were evacuated at the beginning of the war, she was 8. They didn’t live in London, but a town with a docks, and several vital engineering factories. Her parents couldn’t leave - her father was an engineer doing what was considered vital war work.
her elder brother was placed with a family, she and her sisters together at a boarding school. Her brother was well looked after as were they, but they missed their mum.

I think what pp are missing is the genuine and valid fear that poison gas would be used against the civilian population- former soldiers from ww1 had seen first hand its awful effects. Add in the possibility of fire bombing and the carpet bombing of towns and cities and the fear was real. The adults needed to stay put to keep the war effort functioning, the government planned to keep the children as safe as possible.
It’s all very well saying what you would do now, but luckily we are not faced with the dilemma our grandparents were.

MIL had a family evacuated to the farm, she resented having them and I suspect she was pretty unwelcoming.

I think communications and transport are easier now. So it would be possible to video call every day and drive to visit. Which i would probably rather do than have my child live in a war zone. But I dont know.

My nan was evacuated with her children as they were very young. So not all the children were unaccompanied

We have Ukrainian family living with our extended family and obviously the dad sent his wife and child to live in a foreign country with strangers so no different than my nan did.

We live rurally so I imagine we'd be asked to take a child in, which I do think we would do if we could. My grandad had a horrible evacuation experience to start with and his father collected him, he then was sent elsewhere to a family who became friends of his for life. I think in a war situation you would just have to balance what you thought was safest.

Think you might have a different pov if you lived in, say, Gaza and there was a chance for your child to be evacuated but not you.

We had a few Bosnian kids evacuated and placed in our school in the 90s. But they came with their parents. My memory was the local church organised for our town to take them in. Changed days eh?

My grandma was "only" away for 9 months with her younger sister aged about 9. She went from an Essex village near London to Cornwall with her school.

A small boy got blown up on the mined beach down there.
Her dad visited and brought them home because he missed them. There were still bombs flying about locally, but he wanted them together. He was injured in WW1 which is why he wasn't soldiering.

DH's grandparents hosted evacuees in the Suffolk countryside, they were well looked after and kept in touch with his dad until he died. It was close relationship - like siblings or close cousins.

These days no. I think a parent would go with them. Mostly because you hear horror stories from the war and people are so much more aware of safeguarding.

I dont think anyone could know what they would do until it happens. People act differently when terrified for their/their childrens lives.

Generally I don’t think the mass evacuation of children would happen as some kind of government or UN organised event now. we have a better understanding of the impact. Psychologically the result is devastating for the children and children are much more likely to suffer abuse and neglect at the hands of a non relative.

But elsewhere in the world, this still happens. People send their girls off to be married because they can’t feed them. People send their teenage boys on dangerous trips to Europe alone because they don’t see another way out for them (and are often tricked into thinking it is safer)

I guess in a desperate situation, we’ll do anything to ensure our children live.

I don’t know. But if their life was in danger and I wasn’t allowed to leave then perhaps. It would be a last resort.. on the other hand, my kids’ view (we talked about this a few weeks ago) is they would rather die altogether.

I’d want my children to survive. It’s hard to imagine what you’d do and how you’d feel when actually pressed with this situation.
My grandmother was evacuated… she said it was only really primary school children… they were told nobody would want the older kids/ teens and were pretty much seen as adults as soon as they were the size of one. No money to pay for someone to take teens which apparently a handful could and did do. Her older siblings stayed home and were bombed. She and her younger siblings survived as evacuated. She remembers her mum begging for her older siblings to go too and it haunted her. So there’s also the dynamic of splitting up sibling sets… it’s incredibly hard, and if you’ve spoken to people about their own evacuation you’ll know it’s a nuanced hard decision…. Especially if you’re working class and know you couldn’t pay people to take your kids. As always, with money you have choices. So I think it’s hard for middle class to imagine.
Luckily we live in the countryside, so if there’s ever a case of needing to evacuate cities and larger towns, it won’t apply to my children.

You do what you have to do to survive, and you can’t know what that will be until you’re in that position. That said, great grandparents kept DGM and her siblings at home with them in London during WW2. DGM used to talk about the air raid shelters.

My Dad became an evacuee when he was 8 years old. He was sent from Vauxhall in South London to a small village on the North Cornish coast called Boscastle. He was an only child but travelled with his classmates. He absolutely loved it. Dad was looked after very well and had the time of his life! My Granny went down to visit him and I’m sure if she thought he was being mistreated she would have brought him back home.
Dad returned to Boscastle many times with me and Mum and visited those who looked after him and taught him. It gave him a lifetime love of nature. I appreciate some children had a horrendous time but he was very lucky.

My Nan moved with her DC rather than sending them away. Her sisters did the same, so they all moved together and set up a new “family group” in Sussex having moved from Scottish Docks area that was heavily bombed.

I would do the same as her.

As a child in the 80s I went to stay with new families for events. These were people who were known to local organisers, but not vetted and it would have been for a few days or a week max. I think overall it's a pity that it ended.