Day-Care Role Forced Upon Libraries in Latchkey Era

At first glance, it’s a librarian’s dream: hordes of energetic children streaming into public libraries after school each day, a golden opportunity to foster young readers.

But it’s more like a nightmare to some librarians.

Thousands of children, some as young as 2 or 3, are being left unattended at public libraries across the country by working parents who either can’t afford or can’t find adequate day care.

The problem, say librarians, is that public libraries are understaffed and not always the safe havens many parents believe them to be.

At the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in New York, for example, where 100 or more unattended children gather each day, street gangs sometimes snatch jewelry. Last December, there were four arrests for crack in the children’s room despite the presence of security guards, according to librarians.

Chicago librarian Helen Goodman now compares afternoons amid the once-serene stacks to “scenes of the stock exchange that they show on television.”

Worsening the impact of these legions of “library latchkey children” is their coming at a time when children’s librarians are in increasingly short supply. Colleges conferred 3,538 library degrees in 1986, fewer than half the 8,091 degrees in 1979, according to the American Library Assn.

In No Mood for Decorum

There is nothing new, of course, in children coming to libraries after school. The problem is children who come for hours every day, without fail, with nothing to do, with no adult responsible for them, with energy to burn and in no mood to follow library rules.

No one knows how many thousands of children take refuge at libraries, but the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics indicate that 2,258,000 children ages 5 to 13 had no adult at home after school in 1984.

The situation is posing awkward choices for librarians and library organizations: Many librarians instinctively rebel against rules that even hint at restricting children’s access to libraries, and some are critical of fellow librarians who speak of latchkey children as a “problem.”

“We should do absolutely nothing to discourage library use by children,” said Marguerite Dodson, a librarian since 1952 and now head of children’s services of the 60-branch Brooklyn Public Library.

“Maybe we have large numbers of people in the library profession who shouldn’t be there, whose interest is research and not serving the public,” she said.

Nonetheless, the latchkey problem has gotten serious enough that the library association has drafted a position paper on latchkey children and some cities are taking action.

In Atlanta, signs in libraries warn parents about criminal charges of child abandonment.

Demand Adult Supervision

Signs in Boston libraries insist that children be accompanied by an adult. But Mary Margaret Pitts, a main branch librarian, said some young patrons read the notices, then ask with trepidation if they can enter the children’s room.

“We want children to feel that they are wanted in the library, but we want to get the message across to adults that this is not a facility that can watch children like a day-care center,” said Jeri Baker, assistant manager of the Children’s Center at the Central Library in Dallas, where a task force has proposed banning unattended children under 7.

The latchkey phenomenon isn’t limited to cities or the poor, said Mary Somerville, head of children’s library services in Louisville and president of the ALA’s Assn. for Library Services to Children.

She said her cousins from a suburb of Birmingham, Ala., “tell me with great pride that they drop their 11-year-old at the public library each day.”

In Long Beach, N.Y., a Long Island suburb with no organized day care, public library officials announced a

policy aimed at unattended youngsters younger than 7. Librarians make every effort to find a parent or other responsible adult. Failing that, the police are called.

“We’ve had circumstances where 2- and 3-year-olds were left unattended,” said Marianne Pilla, children’s librarian in Long Beach.

A draft copy of the 46-page ALA paper, “Latchkey Children in the Public Library,” urges libraries not to blame children for circumstances not of their own making.

A 1985 study of about 200 libraries in Los Angeles County found “about 2,000 children a day whose parents were using the library as an after-school child-care center,” said Penny Markey, children’s service head for the county system.

“It is a problem in Los Angeles and Southern California,” said Markey. “It’s become more severe with the increase in cost and inaccessibility of adequate child care.”

Safety is an urgent issue. Librarians say many parents don’t understand that public libraries are not immune to the dangers youngsters might encounter at shopping malls or other hangouts. And they are particularly upset about parents who fail to pick up children at closing time.

“Parents don’t realize. We have people who are sinister. We’ve had lots of frightening incidents--people coming in to stare at children,” said Pitts at the Boston Public Library.

When Boston librarians overhear a parent tell a child to stay there and wait, “We dash up to the parent and say, ‘You leave your child at your own risk.’ Parents look very surprised,” said Pitts.

Advantageous Situation

Some librarians, however, have turned the latchkey influx to good advantage. The Huntington Park Public Library southeast of Los Angeles, where 150 to 200 children come after school, began a volunteer program using children to help return books to the shelves and set up displays.

“I’ve really seen a lot of kids become readers. Circulation has really gone up,” said librarian Ruth Morse. “A lot of kids get hooked on reading because they’re around the library so much.”

Whole families of latchkey children sometimes spend days in the library.

At the Brooklyn library, librarian Pam Gunter said 7-year-old Bevaun, 9-year-old Vanessa and 11-year-old Patrick have been coming in almost every day after school for at least two years, staying until 5 or 6 in the evening.

“Bevaun sits at the reference desk with us and reads some books. We’ve seen some improvement in her reading abilities. Patrick was terribly shy, but he’s starting to smile,” she said.

Libraries commonly use story hours and arts and crafts activities to keep latchkey children occupied.

The ALA paper cited some other creative approaches. Libraries in Orange County, N.C., and Greenville, S.C., run after-school survival skills classes for latchkey children. A library in Charles County, Md., has an after-school club featuring library trivia games.

Other libraries have set up volunteer activities and peer tutoring opportunities for older latchkey children and teens.

To Dodson, latchkey children are simply a fact of life, not a problem.

“When we hire people,” she said, “we say, ‘This is what we do. After school, it’s all hands on deck, because the kids’ll be here.’ ”