In England the McCanns would be arrested

[LostPuppy]

Off the bat, I of course hope with all my heart that Madeleine is returned safely

But her "parents" are a disgrace. They left Madeleine and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie sleeping in the apartment ON THEIR OWN. They had taken turns to return from the restaurant to check on their children.

Now hang on! In this country that is illegal, for very good reason.

Even if they 'checked on them' every five minutes that's plenty of time for one of the kids to wake up and try to go to the toilet and crack it's head open slipping on the bathroom floor, or something equally disastrous. They'd never hear the screaming from a bloody restaurant down the road!

Obviously it's unlikely, but I just cant comprehend the mentality of leaving three children under 3 alone on their own, ever, let alone at night in a foreign country!

there have been loads of threads on this dilemma on mn and i couldn't call where the decision has fallen overall..there is always some subtle differences when people pop to school, pop to the bistro, stay in a holiday barn, have a storyteller at womad etc (not sure i've seen that one actually!)

pinball do you mean as much as half the parents on MN would think its fine to leave their toddlers alone?

I've been on the wrong site all these years then....................

Have completely avoided posting about this specific subject as it seems SO contraversial BUT i really feel id like to add something now.

I cannot imagine what the parents are going through. The parents deserve all our support and prayers until their daughter is found. Whatever the outcome they didnt expect this to happen when they made the decision they did that night and im sure many of us dont let ourselves think the worst when we take risks of any kind, if we did we would never leave the house.
When i first heard this story i immediaely wondered what would have happened if Maddie had fell in the swimming pool looking for her mum and dad and had drown? Would the parents be held responsible??? If a fire had caused death would the parents be held negligent? I think the answer would be YES BUt untill now i have kept my opinion to myself because at the end of the day a little girl is missing and that should be the most important thing....find maddie then discuss!!

Xenia, saying 'I think Xenia is a thief' is equally defamatory. You can't get away with libel or slander by using one qualifying word!

I think people feel what has turned out to be a false sense of security a. on holiday when everyone lets their guard down and is relaxing and b. on a holiday organised by a firm that specialises in family holidays with childcare.

FWIW dh and I went to Woolley Grange, which is a similar operation in England. We left ds, age three, asleep in the hotel room while we had dinner. But our room was in the stables, across the yard from the dining room. We couldn't see it from our table in the dining room. WG had baby listening so we believed if ds woke up, we'd know about it. The door of the room had a yale lock and a proper lock. I do remember thinking about the trade off between locking him in so no-one could get in or leaving the bottom lock off for fast access in a fire. Chose to use just the yale lock as I thought fire was a bigger risk than child abduction (although thought both were fairly remote chances).

Tbh it made me feel a bit uncomfortable at the time but the place had been recommended (by MN!) so I thought I was being a wuss and squashed those thoughts (and we'd have been buggered otherwise, as ds can't stay up beyond eight o'clock and we only had one room). But I didn't enjoy it so since then, have only been on holidays in hired cottages and stayed in on the evenings.

Wouldn't dream of criticising the McCann's though, they only did what 100s of other parents on MW holidays have done. They were incredibly unlucky.

(Btw, if anyone is thinking about Woolley Grange, the vegetarian food was hideous).

no idea but they always produce a lot of views and most importantly each situation is different....it doesn't seem to be something where you can say a right thinking person would say x

Whilst I accept that the parents are receiving kinder treatment from the media due to being professionals, I believe inverted snobbery is fuelling some people?s viewpoints on how neglectful the parents were. I have a feeling that even if the parents had used a baby listening service (in another MW resort) and their child had been abducted from her room the parents would still be gaining criticism from some quarters who love to imply the moneyed classes care more about their ?adult? socialising time than their children.

I personally can give my utmost sympathy and reserve all judgement on any parent who has had their precious child stolen from them, regardless of the parents? social status, regardless of the circumstances in which it happened. If the children had died in a fire, fallen out a window or wandered off and drowned I would be more judgemental. But presumably, the parents assessed the risk of those things occurring and decided the risk was negligible. I don?t see how they can be held responsible for the unthinkable happening.

Plus we don?t even know the full facts. Perhaps they intended to use babysitters but none were available. Perhaps they intended to use the baby monitor but it did not work. Perhaps the mother felt uneasy about leaving the children but was cajoled into doing so by her husband or friends or they waved away any feeling of uneasiness, getting carried away with the resort?s ethos of child-friendliness. Perhaps the first night or two the party of friends checked on the children more frequently but as the nights went on and nothing happened, they became more complacent. Who knows.

Also, has anyone proposed that if this particular child had not gone missing, it?s likely another one would have been taken from the area, perhaps under different circumstances and then all our sympathy would be going to the parents?

I think it is bad taste to publicly jump all over this family by name. It is possible to say in what circumstances you would or wouldn?t leave children without naming them or referring to the specifics of their situation. On the other hand, I don?t feel it is anyone else?s place to censor these different viewpoints, I would just ask people to please understand if you are only vilifying this family because they have money and go on the type of holiday that your family would never go on.

Okay, I'll out myself as a solicitor. My view is that what the McCanns did strayed over the boundary of legality.

That is not just my view by the way - there is a legal opinion on Alphamummy which actually concurs if you read it.

What worries me is the general level of acceptability of this behaviour. It's almost like speeding. Although nearly everyone has responded that they wouldn't do it, it's kind of understandable, maybe acceptable blah blah.

To me, the law is the law and should be upheld even if I personally happen to disagree with it. That's why the drug trafficking analogy, Blu.

This is not being sanctimonious - to err is human - I have speeding tickets too. I am lucky. The McCanns do deserve our sympathy. But our children deserve our best care.

'strayed over the boundary of legality'

So what would you have done? Make it illegal?

Would that prevent it happening? Don't thihk so. There was a case referred to on here recently and about 3 miles from me where a young girl was taken from a bathroom at the back of the house whilst the mother was at the front. Only because the girl was dumped in a lane was she found.

For me the issue is not if it is legal or illegal - it will not prevent it, ever.

But the law in this area isn't clear cut, Quatro. There may be legal opinion posted somewhere now, but that's hindsight (and opinion, not established case law).

Hey Niceglasses (you must tell me where you get them from)

The point I was making is that I think they were breaking the law, that what they did was illegal.

I think illegality is a deterrent for some people. Not for everyone, I agree.

Of course you are right when you say that if she was abducted - which seems likely - that a determined abductor would have stolen her or another child anyway.

What interests me is the boundary.

I think your opinion ultimatley comes down to whether you have done it, or something similar. If you have (like slack me, left in a hotel room whilst in hotel bar) you find it hard to condemn them. Perhaps if it would go against everything you are as a parent to do this then you feel some indignation. Unfortunatley it has taught us all a lesson.

PS - the glasses are the ones with wine in, not the binlids!

I am surprised about the criticsms been laid out about the McCann's social standing etc... it is their level of education that has allowed them to use the media as a tool for publiscising their daugher's disappearance.

I don't think they should be criticised for being educated and professional - they have worked hard to achieve that 'position' in society. I think their story affects us all so deeply as many of us (I suspect) fall into the same demographic group and therefore we feel their pain more keenly. They are an incredibly symapthethic family.

I would like to think that I would be just as empathetic if their situation were different. I thought we lived in a classless and tolerant society these days!

If I think of all the cases of abducted children I can remember which have had huge media speculation over the last few years, none have been from a particularly middle class / educated background. And have received huge sympathy. Think of Holly and Jessica, Damillolah Taylor (sorry I don't know how his first name is spelt), Sarah Payne or the girl abducted from her bath most recently.

It makes me very cross that people are saying this case is getting more publicity because of the parent's backgrounds. Or Madeleine's looks! If anything I think they're getting more criticism because as 'professional people' they 'should have known better.'

As I said way down this thread, the 'non-middleclass' mums at dd's school are incredibly harsh on the family: 'they got what they deserved leaving those kids alone' / 'I can't feel sorry for them' etc. etc. and it's been very hard to hear them say those things even though I do feel personally that the family made a huge mistake in their decision.

I think there is as somebody already said an 'inverted snobbery' at work in which non-middle class people (I'm not at all comfortable with this class business btw) think the middle classes are priveleged idiots who deserve no sympathy because everything is 'easy' for them.

The social standing question is interesting too.

Nobody's criticising the fact that the McCanns are professional people. The criticism is that the media has been manipulated and is biased because the McCanns are middle class. The critics think the tabloids would have panned the McCanns had they been (say) poor and asian or poor and black. That's actually quite possibly true. But isn't it irrelevant? What matters is that Maddy's missing.

I have no idea whether or not the McCanns were originally middleclass as opposed to professional middleclass. The reason I bring this up is that it is an angle that might silence the critics.

There is however, a phenomenon of middleclass child neglect (parents crying me-time, me-time, I need me-time). It is not widely recognised and children do not present with physical symptoms. My children, like the McCann children, are occasional sufferers.

Without reading through this, I can only say how could anyone in their right mind add to the pain the McCanns are living by adding this sort of rubbish? It's cruel, wrong and pointless. Find something else to bitch about.

Don't you think a lot of that depends on family structure?

At the risk of making useless generalisations and speaking without evidence other than observations, the non-middle class folk around here (inner city SE London, BIG mix of people) have a very good family network so 'me time' is relatively easy to get, there's always a cousin, an aunt or a set of close mates nearby to babysit if you need to go out. The middle class people often seem quite isolated from family and have friends scattered across London if not the UK and in fact worldwide. So the struggle for 'me-time' perhaps becomes more of a focus as it has to be 'organised' rather than 'natural'?

This is all guess-work. Feel free to shoot me down.

sauce..suggest you read the thread

Qu, the alpha mummy article does not say that. Go and read it. It quote a very old UK law on neglect which says it is an offence to neglect a child and then there is no definition of what neglect it. It does not say the ACt in s 8 or something says to leave a child alone whist you eat X distance away is a breach of the law. In fact I read that article which refers to the 1930s act on neglect and it seems clear it would not breach the law. An individual judge would have to look at whether there was neglect (if it had happened in the UK). In the 1930s that would have been designed for parents tying up a child for 14 days without food kind of thing.

So I think even the thread title is potentially libellous actually.

"There is however, a phenomenon of middleclass child neglect (parents crying me-time, me-time, I need me-time). It is not widely recognised and children do not present with physical symptoms. My children, like the McCann children, are occasional sufferers. "

I think you are right here and mine are occassional sufferers to. Its a really interesting point. I suppose though, the flip side is, over protective pushy parents who are with their kids every minute of the day and organise the arse off them. Has something else changed? Has society changed so much we can't leave children alone or has this always happened and we just didn't have the mad media frenzy in the past? Too many questions for just now I suppose.

I agree with Xenia the thread title is inflammatory and wrong

793 messages? Are you kidding? I haven't got the time. But if it has progressed beyond the first 30-40 into some sort of useful discussion, forgive me. Why don't you change the thread title to something less inflammatory?

I suppose there might be differing cultural norms between different groups, races etc in the UK of course which may explain the different views of people on this issue and many others although I think there's much more molly coddling I will drive that child even 5 yards because I am a non working middle class mother and my children are my entire life and I have nothing else kind of thing than amongst working class families who wouldn't dream of driving a 14 year old to school.

arrested doesn't mean charged

ng, that can involve two issues which I probably wrongly put together further below - the benign traditional neglect and independence I "gifted" to my very independent teenagers and even their 8 year old brothers and I suppose when is it right to leave sleeping children alone and I think they probably are over all separate issues.

I don't think class really comes into it

but mark warner holidays are very popular with media types and always get lots of coverage in travel pages of broadsheets and glossy magazines