Latchkey kid

A child is referred to as a key child who is regularly without after-school care, for example, because his parents are working. The term rarely used today was coined in 1956 from Munich educators and psychologists Otto bacon. In the U.S. there is the appropriate term Latchkey Child since 1944. The negatively occupied mainly in the western German language word alludes to the fact that such children then usually had their own apartment key, the visible dangling often open on a string around his neck.

Were affected and are usually 9 - to 14 - year-old children, because for them the school / daycare nurseries were closed, while the youth recreational facilities for them yet provided any offers.

The lack of after-school care and education has been and is often regarded as unfavorable for the development of children and blamed for problems such as poor performance in school and juvenile delinquency. But is not crucial for the development of a child if a parent is at home immediately after school, but you care how intensively and regularly by the children involved. These can be parents, nursery teachers, school social workers, neighbors, or other relatives. Latchkey children do not often have a large autonomy.

In the GDR, the term latchkey due to the almost complete supply of school club places had no negative meaning. On the contrary, it was a payoff for many children to be the four possible Hort years latchkey in the course and to be able to go right after school or earlier from Hort home alone.

As part of the PISA 2000 survey 15 -year-old German students were no significant differences between key and children where at least one parent is a full time home found in educational success. The key child - debate also plays a role in the discussion of all-day schools.

In 1996, the German rapper Cora E.einen hit in which she popularized differentiating with the song key child, the problem:

I Wurd for latchkey. These are the children where the parents are not home,

The mother is not at the window, waving, because she went to the service, day after day.

It certainly was not easy for them to tell us that she still likes us.

I miss nothing, but you ask yourself, who is your father, if you get only twice a year post.

But today I realized there would be nothing as it is, it would have been not how it was!