‘We Can’t Be Baby Sitters’ : Libraries Worry Over Latchkey Children

Parents are leaving hundreds of children daily at Los Angeles public libraries, prompting worry among staff members that the children are vulnerable to crime, according to a study released Thursday.

A survey of children’s librarians at 57 of the Los Angeles Public Library’s 62 branches during the first week of June estimated that 1,650 “latchkey children” were told by their parents to stay at city libraries while parents finished work, ran errands or enjoyed leisure activities, said Priscilla Moxom, coordinator of children’s services.

The youngsters are termed “latchkey children” because of the keys they use to get into their empty homes after school.

Studies Coincide

The study was timed to coincide with a survey by the Los Angeles County Public Library system, whose officials also are concerned that parents are threatening to turn the libraries into day-care centers. The county report estimated that 300 children were routinely left at the county’s 91 libraries for extended periods on an average weekday.

The city study found that two San Fernando Valley library branches, Chatsworth and Granada Hills, had, respectively, the second- and third-greatest number of unsupervised children.

From June 3 to 7, city librarians counted 118 latchkey children at Chatsworth and 97 at Granada Hills. Only the Eagle Rock branch exceeded the two Valley libraries, with 412 children tallied over a week.

Forty of the 57 branches that responded to the city survey considered latchkey children a consistent problem.

Both studies defined “library latchkey” children as those who are required by their parents to wait at libraries on a regular basis after school. Most were said to be between ages 10 and 14, although some branches reported a greater number of children in the preschool and primary school years.

“I think parents should be more concerned about their children’s safety,” said Linda Morgan, children’s librarian at the Chatsworth branch. “We can’t be baby sitters,” she said, echoing a note of concern sounded repeatedly in interviews with eight librarians from the Valley’s 17 city libraries.

Librarians stressed that they lack the resources to adequately safeguard children and that they do not have the funds to expand such programs as story hours, film showings and puppet shows to entertain them.

Moreover, they complained that some children disrupt other patrons with noise, litter and pranks such as disrupting card files and racks of books. They say that the branches already lack adequate staffing and that library employees are too busy to keep tabs on unsupervised children.

Potential Problems Feared

Librarians could not recall any cases of serious injury or abductions of latchkey children.

But they uniformly expressed concern about the potential for serious incidents. Because libraries are public facilities, children visiting them may come into contact with virtually anyone, the librarians say.

The Sherman Oaks branch cited several incidents in which children had been victims of indecent exposure or had been threatened in altercations with “street people” loitering in the library.

“We’ve had people expose themselves to the kids,” said Cheryl Maylis, the Sherman Oaks children’s librarian, recalling two cases last year. Maylis had few details of the incidents but said transients and children have gotten into potentially dangerous conflicts in the branch, and that one man threatened to strike a child with a chair.

Most latchkey children at Sherman Oaks, at 5 to 7 years old, are generally younger than those at other branches, Moxom said. “Little children are left eight hours without food and water,” she said.

“We can’t supervise a child every minute. Parents don’t realize that. They think it’s a safe place, and it may not be.”

The severity of the problem varies widely among branches, the study found, with libraries in poorer, working-class districts and in more affluent districts, including Chatsworth and Sherman Oaks, reporting high numbers of latchkey children.

Moxom said that, in more affluent areas, children typically come from two-income families in which the parents see the library as a secure and convenient place to leave children after school, while in lower-income districts parents cannot afford day care and view the library as the day-care center of last resort.

Yet in both cases parents tend to regard leaving the children at the library as preferable to leaving them alone at home, Moxom said.

Although librarians say most children study or read quietly and cause no problem, those who are troublemakers put staff members in a frustrating bind. They must send the raucous ones out of the library and away from any supervision or allow them to stay in the building, where they annoy others.

At the North Hollywood branch, children’s librarian Helen Muller said, there are fewer unattended children, apparently because parents know the library, surrounded by a park, attracts transients.

“That spooks parents away from leaving the kids,” Muller said.

The Sun Valley library also has few problems, senior librarian Judith Tetove said, recalling only one incident, in which an 8-year-old boy was extorting money from smaller children and occasionally punching and spitting on them.

Tetove said the boy is now forbidden from entering the library, and that a library security guard spoke to the child’s family to explain the problem.

Library officials are unsure exactly how the study will be used, Moxom said, although she expects that the city library system will now develop a policy on dealing with latchkey children and their parents. Parents are also using parks, playgrounds, theaters and shopping centers as repositories for their children, she said.

Officials from the city, county and Metropolitan Cooperative Library systems will meet today in Los Angeles to discuss the latchkey problem throughout the region. The metropolitan system includes libraries in several incorporated cities, such as Burbank and Glendale.

“If it’s as widespread as this, we need some kind of interagency dialogue and planning,” Moxom said. “We have neither the staff nor funding to provide a specialized program geared to after-school activities. We don’t have a direction yet.”