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The truth about latchkey kids

Gen Xers like to boast about being left unsupervised after school. But there was a grim side to it that has left many determined not to repeat the sins of their parents.

This is a by-now standard Gen X coping mechanism: treating childhood neglect – in this case, taking care of ourselves after school – as a matter of significant pride, part of our generational identity. For example, in 2011, the journalist Susan Gregory Thomas wrote an essay for the WSJ called “ The divorce generation”, where she describes the effects of her own parents’ split, with much of the same fence-sitting between exhilaration and reproach: The study’s authors don’t have a full explanation for why this might be the case, but they speculated that some single mothers “endure considerable stress and may have few psychological resources to offer a child after school.”

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