Kirstie Allsopp is reported to the youth welfare office because she enabled her son to travel to Europe
British TV personality Kirstie Allsopp let her 15-year-old son go on a three-week train trip around Europe with a 16-year-old friend. Allsopp subsequently posted a proud, happy comment about it on X – which sparked a Child Services investigation.
Last week, Allsopp wrote:
My little boy has returned from a three-week Interrail trip. He turns 16 on Wednesday. Due to restrictions on hostels and travel, he went with a friend who is already 16. They organized the whole thing: Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Marseille, Toulouse, Barcelona and Madrid 1/3
— Kirstie Allsopp (@KirstieMAllsopp) 19 August 2024
The post sparked nostalgia among many people who fondly remembered their own travels in youth. However, many others criticized her and made the usual noise: He is too young. Anything could have happened. The world is uncertain. And so forth.
Allsopp fought. Of course, every child is different, but “the danger is in underestimating them, not in releasing them,” she told the world in a Daily Mail Article. She noted that her mother-in-law went to college at age 15. Her father-in-law joined the Merchant Marine during World War II at age 16. Were her parents negligent?
Maybe it depends on who you ask.
Allsopp received a text message from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), her local child protection agency. A social worker explained to Allsopp that she was legally required to investigate every case that was called to the agency. Allsopp asked who had called. The agency would not say. Allsopp tried to explain that it was probably someone remotely expressing disapproval and trying to teach her a lesson (as in this case). The agency said it didn’t matter. The social worker added that it was “standard practice” for the agency’s file on the case to remain open until her child was 25.
That’s a pretty long time to consider someone a child, let alone a victim.
In this case, the problem is not just the bloody sport of blaming the mothers. It is also that the government has no freedom to err on the side of common sense. Officials are obliged to be obtuse and worry about imaginary physical dangers to children while ignoring how all this required paranoid parenting can negatively affect children’s mental health. Overprotected children are actually at risk of developing depression, anxiety, and passivity.
Allsopp herself admits that she said no when her son first suggested the trip. But then she thought about it more carefully and realised that he was ready for the adventure – that it was her job as a good mother to preserve his confidence, self-respect, development and joy of life by letting him go.
“It is up to the parents to decide who is grown enough to spread their wings and who is not,” she wrote.
In the US, at least eight states have passed “reasonable independence of children” laws, which state that neglect occurs when a parent places their child at serious, obvious and unreasonable risk – but not when a parent lets children do something on their own. Perhaps it’s time to pass a similar law across the pond.
