In the fast-forward rush of late-20th-century American parentdom, the latest craze of kid-crazed mammies and daddies is stealth baby-sitting. It’s the increasingly shady practice of parents–often professional and suburban-to park junior in local multimedia and toy stores while they run off on errands.
Why turn to expensive sitters if you can plop your kids, for nothing, in front of mesmerizing computer gizmos overseen by ever-so-helpful salespeople? First, ever-so-frustrated salespeople complain that they don’t want the responsibility. “It’s not good parenting,” says Marc Natividad, the assistant manager of the Learningsmith’s store at the Beverly Center mall in Los Angeles. Besides, temporarily abandoned kids hog the game displays for hours at a time (if they don’t break them) from potential customers. When parents ask Natividad if they can drop their children at his store, he says no. But most don’t ask. “They’ve left their children and they blame us if the kids aren’t there,” says Jean Boucher, a supervisor at Learningsmith’s store in Stamford, Conn. At another store, a mother became indignant when she returned to find that no one had taken her child to a restroom. For the kids, though, being left with popular computer offerings like Math Blaster is like recess in a free arcade. With a computer monitor and a mouse, who needs Mom?
Stealth baby-sitting has sturdy roots. For years, operators of some libraries, movie theaters and restaurants have had trouble with parents’ leaving unattended children at the door–but this variation is more worrisome. Coast to coast, kid dumping has became such a pervasive problem that it was the subject of a panel discussion at the American Booksellers Association spring meeting in Chicago. Oliver Johnson, executive vice president of the North Carolina Child Advocacy Institute, a private, nonprofit public-policy group, says he’s shocked that parents are so relaxed about leaving their children with strangers. The parents are not “bad people,” he cautions. “They’re just not thinking.”
Recently, computer- and toy-store owners have started fighting back. Careful not to offend parents who might actually buy something, some proprietors have taken subtle steps. At the Store of Knowledge in L.A., there are no seats at the computer station. The computers are also located in the back of the store, making it harder for parents to look in from outside and spot a potential kid-dump site. Other moves are more hard-line. Some stores have turned off their computers, And when the Learningsmith store in Stamford discovers an unattended kid, management calls security to find the parents. Oops. The game of kid and mouse might be up.
