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!

"No reason why Harrogate or Merthyr Tydfil would be any safer than London. "

Well if we get another pandemic, the countryside will be safer, at least in theory.
Were children evacuated to Harrogate and Merthyr though or was it real countryside?

Society has changed so much I don't think you can really make the comparison. We've far more options these days.
I think as a house wife in 1940, living a frugal life, with a husband conscripted and bombs dropping every night, absolutely I'd have sent them.
In 2026 with a job, a bank balance and a car, I'd be making alternative arrangements to keep them safe.

Yes. If there were bombs falling and I couldn't keep her safe, I would send her away with the hope of ensuring her survival.
But I don't think I'd ever be quite the same again after making that choice.

(I'm on a tram into Manchester getting a lump in my throat just imagining my DD and her pre-school class being put on a train without us and the worry they'd face. This game of hypotheticals is not the one for me today!) 😂

We have family in rural areas so I might consider that, I wouldn’t send them to people I don’t know. If it happened now I WFH so I’d likely go with them. I dread to think of all the abuse that happened.

I’m reading the MO diaries of Nella Last and she tells of two local sets of evacuees and what happened at the end of the war. one boy begged to stay with his evacuee family as he was loved and looked after as his mother only liked girls and he had 4 sisters.

The other evacuees were a family of 4. The parents wanted to take the older two children as they were now old enough to work and contribute financially. The younger two they wanted to leave with the evacuee family.

Not everyone missed their children and then as now, not all children were wanted.

I'd probably do what my UK relatives did during WII, sent the kids to relatives somewhere safe (Ireland in this case). Sometimes its helpful to have a very dispersed international family!

My grandad made the decision not to send my dad and uncle away. His view was we all live together or die together. My dad was 9 and uncle 3. Where they lived ( a huge tenement block) had an enormous cellar which was reinforced and used as a bomb shelter. My grandad normally a very gentle man who let my nan make decisions around the kids, took a look at the basement and told my nan, no. He couldn’t explain it, but just no. They’d stay in their flat and live or die together.
Their tenement block took a direct hit. They were assisted out of the flat ( luckily still standing albeit with no windows and wonky doors) by the air raid warden. All of the people sheltering in their flat basement died as the bomb hit the blocks water tank and the basement flooded. All of my dads friends ( those who hadn’t been evacuated )died that night. Because they were now homeless, my grandparents had no choice, the kids had to be evacuated. They ended up in Norfolk, staying with an elderly lady who had middle aged non married children who still lived at home. My dad and uncle became like the children these middle aged people would never have and they kept in contact for the rest of their lives.

I’d send mine if I couldn’t go with them.

This. IMO a lot of parents would be too worried about potential abuse, or even just severity or unkindness.

Though having said that, a friend of ours (now gone) was evacuated from London aged 5, to a farmhouse in Devon. He absolutely loved it, and more than once in retirement was asked to give talks to primary school children about it. One thing he told us he loved, was cuddling up with the farm dogs in front of the fire, after a bath!

He enjoyed it all so much that he chose to move to rural Devon after he retired.

I think communications and transport are easier now. So it would be possible to video call every day and drive to visit.

Petrol would be rationed. And it would depend how far away they were. Some London children were evacuated to the Home Counties, but some were sent to the West Country or Wales, so you couldn't just pop off for a day trip.

As I said last night, it wasn't just about air raids. After Dunkirk, late May 1940, invasion was thought to be a real possibility, and that's when schoolchildren from SE coastal areas were evacuated. Adults who could leave were encouraged to do so too, unless they were essential workers. They were told that if an invasion did happen, they must stay where they were and not attempt to leave. The authorities didn't want the roads clogged up with fleeing civilians, as had happened in France.

I imagine that a lot of people would refuse, and claim that it was a conspiracy theory or something, or that they will not do what they are told, just because the government said so!

I live rurally, so I would hope that I would not have to send mine away if ever WW3 started and evacuation was put into place. I would take evacuees if I could, though; I used to work in schools in some very deprived areas, and some of the social issues were eye-watering.

I don’t think a lot of it would fly nowadays, I can’t see many Gen Z’s signing up to go to war for starters nor their parents allowing them. Rationing would also be against human rights.

My Grandmother decided that she wasn't going to allow her children to be evacuated to live with strangers.

Couple of weeks later, my grandfather came home after another night on fire watch to find a pile of rubble where their house used to be. The only reason my mother survived was because the explosion blew the nursery door across the top of the cot just before the roof and top floors collapsed.

She was absolutely terrified of enclosed spaces for the following 80-odd years.

I wouldn’t, but I heard the stories about what happened to my Aunts and Uncles as evacuees in WW2. My Nan ended up bringing them back from very abusive evacuee situations and they spent the war in London with her.

Not having read the testimonies of many many children who were neglected and abused.

It seems mad how expectations change. In wartime, young men were sent to the battlefields, many to not return home alive. Women worked in factories, doing dangerous, dirty and physically demanding work and children were sent to live far away with strangers and people just accepted it as 'doing their bit'.

Yet during the pandemic people were asked to mostly stay at home and not cough on other people and many were up in arms about it.

I think its amazing how "bidable" people are , especially in times of crisis. The idea that we'd "agree" not to see family members for months on end during Covid, even if they were old or dying, for example?

If you were being bombed every night and someone offered you somewhere safe to send your children?

“Would you pack your car up and take your children to the countryside?” wasn’t the question.
In your smugness, you seem to have missed that.

Yeah I’m getting a bit fed up of these stupid responses. Most don’t have a countryside retreat to hide in and it wasn’t even the question.

Giving children to strangers isn’t necessarily a safe option so no unless it was someone I knew.

I think London was bombed every night for 9 months in the blitz - I could be wrong on that but if anyone is interested they can look it up.
i would send my kids to safety if the above was happening

My cousin was evacuated and came home with better clothes and toys than she went away with. On the other hand, read Jack Rosenthal’s story of his evacuation experience ‘The Evacuees’. It’s too hard to generalise but don’t forget whole schools went together - my grammar school went to Bedford - and that is different to children being isolated.

But I suspect many were psychologically effected by the war time events but in those days you got on with it and there was no benefits to claim for snxiety

Only if my Mum or other relatives would have them. The city we live in now was flattened in the war but i have family in safer places. I wouldn't want them going to strangers. My grandmother still exchanged letters, phone calls and Christmas cards with her evacuation family til she died.

This we know now the scale of child abuse sexual /emotional and all sorts so, no.