Does concern for our children’s safety justify spying on them? I ask this question as I consider the fallout from the abduction of 4-year-old Madeleine McCann from her parents’ holiday home in Plaia de Luz in Portugal’s Algarve. In fact she was not even 4 on May 3 when, whilst her parents ate in a nearby restaurant, an intruder broke into the room she was sleeping in with her brother and sister and abducted her. Since then, there has not been a day when Madeleine’s appealing face has not been front-page news in the British press. The response to her abduction has been, to say the least, tremendous. But so has the fallout.
First, there is the anxiety and panic. What has happened to the McCanns is a harrowing nightmare. If there was a Richter scale for parental anxiety, having your daughter snatched while she slept, possibly by a pedophile, strikes pretty much at the top of the scale. The McCanns nightmare is made even more painful by the fact that they left three under 4s alone while they went out for dinner. The British press has chosen to gloss over this fact, whilst the Portuguese press and many online commentators have seized upon it. Much of this is based on the falsely reassuring “well it couldn’t happen to us, because we would never leave our children unattended” factor. I say false because there is no such thing as zero risk, no parent can fully guarantee their child’s safety no matter how much they wish they could. Accusing the McCanns of negligence also does not help them at a time of great anguish. They deserve our unqualified sympathy for the ordeal they are going through.
And of course this being the British tabloid press, xenophobia was quick to come to the fore. First the Portuguese police was painted as incompetent and incapable of solving this case, the subtext being that the British police would have handled this so much better than these “useless foreigners”.
The Portuguese were rightly not amused. Then families started to cancel holidays to Portugal, somehow suggesting that this was a particularly Portuguese phenomenon, as if Portuguese beaches were little more than hunting grounds for pedophiles on the lookout for pretty blond children. You could almost be forgiven for thinking that this kind of thing never happens in Britain.
Of course they do happen in Britain. Take for instance the distressing story of the 6-year— old girl who was abducted from her own bathroom in December 2005. She had been taking a bath. Her mother left her for an instant (now we would never leave our children unattended in the bath whilst we take a phone call or attend to the cooking! No, No, never! They shout in self-delusion). A man broke in, abducted her and raped her. Horrific.
Yes, they happen in Britain, as they happen in every part of the planet. Pedophiles unfortunately exist, it is an incontestable fact. But the most important fact is one that is quickly overlooked in the sweeping fever of panic: Abductions by strangers are rare. Abductions by strangers who go on to murder the abducted child are rarer still. In Britain, you can count them on the fingers of your hands.
They are rare if your child lives in a rich, developed country like Britain or for that matter Portugal. There are not so rare if your child lives say in Uganda or other parts of the planet less graced with peace and prosperity. And this highlights yet again the black-white divide. Would there have been such a frenzy of media interest had the McCanns not been white and middle class? Would we see Madeleine’s pictures splashed across the media had she not been pretty and blond?
The same questions were asked in 2002 at the time of the Soham murders. The parallels in media coverage are glaring. Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were beautiful smiling young girls. White, blond, girls, who looked lovely in their football shirts, just like we have seen picture of Madeleine wearing an Everton shirt. And just like in 2002, million pound rewards were quickly offered for any information leading to an arrest and showbiz personalities queued up to show their support, as did footballers and politicians.
The scale of it this time is even bigger. The Find Madeleine website generated 25 million hits in one day. Companies as diverse as supermarkets, petrol producers, banks and airlines have offered to help, mainly by distributing posters. Not since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, have we seen such an outpouring of emotions and solidarity. Of course we all hope and pray that Madeleine will be found alive and well, but the intensity of the need to feel we are doing something is mind-boggling. It’s that lethal combination of fear and impotence. What happened to the McCanns terrifies us — even more because we don’t know who abducted her or why — and we are relatively powerless to do anything either to stop it happening again or to find her. All we can is donate money, wear yellow ribbons, forward phone messages and put up posters. It’s all very commendable. Only it is just out of proportion.
But the most disproportionate thing of all is the way we load our anxieties onto our children. The truth is they are as safe today as they were a month ago and the risk of a child being abducted is minimal. It is a risk that does not justify taking extreme measures to limit the liberty of our children or to curtail their independence, something far more important to their personal development. I am alarmed by the growing market for school nurseries with web-enabled CCTV whereby parents can watch their children remotely any time of day, and by various gadgets designed to physically locate a child in the same way that couriers such as DHL track their packages. There is even a professor at Reading University who has come up with a microchip implant that can be activated to track the whereabouts of a child. It is all such an overreaction and has much more to do with modern anxieties about parenting than about the real risk of something happening to your child.
I am also frightened by the prospect of this big brother society where we raise our children remotely; we watch them and control access to them instead of nurturing them.
What children need is simple: To be in the company of people who look after them and encourage them to be independent and resourceful. They do not need cameras, microchips, or personal tags. Those are just props to help parents deal with their anxiety.
