After the long controversy surrounding the return home alone of young children, the theme of minors’ independence remains in the spotlight. And it is linked to the necessity of having a babysitter to support the family. For which age group is the presence of a babysitter most necessary? Until when do parents turn to a nanny? The discourse on minors’ autonomy will automatically shift to job offers for babysitters. Based on a survey among registered accounts on www.sitly.it, a platform specialized in connecting parents and babysitters (the largest in Italy by the number of subscribers), 25.54% of registered parents need support for children aged 1 year (moms are returning to work, but many children are still not sent to daycare?); between 2 and 4 years, the percentage decreases but remains above 10%. During primary school, the percentage decreases in parallel with the children’s “growing up,” but yes, there is relevant confirmation. The decrease in demand for babysitters becomes really noticeable after 12 years (the figure drops to 1.83%) and comes almost to 0 by 14 years, which is when Italian law allows parents to leave their children alone at home or on the street.
The events at the beginning of the year related to the controversy raised by middle school students returning home alone reminded us that in Italy, you cannot leave children alone until the age of 14 and, therefore, cannot have them return from school unsupervised. In a country traditionally filled with helicopter parents (from the Anglo-Saxon definition of “helicopter parents,” parents who hover perpetually around their children in an unceasing effort to keep them safe and protected), a somewhat coherent voice from free-range parents, a movement born in America in favor of child autonomy, unexpectedly rose. Many parents supported having middle school children return home independently. The debate is still open. And to think that since May 8, Utah has officially declared itself the first state to legalize parental freedom: from now on, it will be allowed to send children over 9 years old to school or the playground alone, and it will be legal to leave a child alone in the car for a few minutes (of course, in the absence of dangers, such as high-traffic roads or excessively high or low temperatures). In the Netherlands, the law states that you cannot leave non-self-sufficient people alone at home. The provisions do not specify when an individual (whether a child or an elderly person) needs concrete help. The Dutch thus begin around the age of 8/10 to leave their children alone at home for short periods until 15 years old, when they are normally allowed to stay overnight without supervision. Even in Spain, there is no law regarding leaving children at home or having them return unsupervised. Everything is left to the personal criteria of parents to assess the child’s character, the safety of the city they live in, and the habits of family members. Across the ocean, in British Columbia, a child cannot be left unsupervised if they are under 8 years old, while in Ontario, youth associations urge careful evaluation of a child’s independence until they are 16 years old (which is when they are allowed to leave the family home and refuse any parental control). In Japan, the strong sense of community reflects on the autonomy of young people: even kindergarten children run their first errands on their own around their neighborhood. Of course, the subject is sensitive considering that in Italy, the number of missing persons reported between 1974 and June 30, 2016, amounted to 9,380, including 1,945 minors (in Spain, minors make up 40% of the missing, an even higher percentage). The risks of accidents and other dangers must be added to this phenomenon. For working parents or those without active grandparents available, the babysitter remains an essential reference figure for school drop-off.
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