One thing I’ve noticed after 10 years working as cabin crew for an international airline is the yawning gap between the way people in first class treat their children, and the way those in economy do.
One of the first things people seem to do upon arrival into the gilded elite is farm out responsibility for their children. I can’t say I blame them: what parent wouldn’t want a little holiday from the drudgery of chaperoning kids during the summer holidays?
But some parents have no shame in expecting other people to look after their kids. I’ve had little tykes wander down from first class, spend the afternoon in “economy day care”, then when you finally reunite them with their parents behind the velvet rope, they act like you’re handing them back their bags from the overhead locker. Not even “thanks” for looking out for their beloved little sprogs.
So I wasn’t surprised to hear the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp got into hot water this week when it emerged – through the medium of a self-congratulatory post on social media – that she had allowed her then 15-year-old son to go inter-railing around Europe for nine days with a friend who was 16.
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(You may remember Allsopp from the time she outraged a generation of renting millennials by explaining how they could get on the property ladder by cancelling their Netflix subscription and bringing a sandwich to work.)
Allsopp was “very, very cross” when someone (probably some jealous renter) had the temerity to report her to social services after her post on X on Monday. Social services inquired as to what procedures she had put in place to ensure the safety of her underage son – who has since turned 16 – on his jaunt around Europe. Her response: “My husband, Ben, and I ensured he’d be as safe as possible, with all the necessary numbers on his phone, full travel insurance and one of my credit cards – for emergency use only.”
Back in my day, in order to be let loose of a summer, you had to concoct some story about staying over in a friend’s house, before passing out in some field on a six pack of Blue WKD. Imagine getting handed an inter-railing ticket and credit card for “emergencies only”, before jetting off around Europe at 15? There would be little emergencies happening at every bar from here to Berlin.
As much as I make fun of my typical Irish mammy, there’s no way she would have let me on a plane alone at the age of 15. I remember the summer I had to get the train to Galway alone to go to the Gaeltacht when I was 17. The mammy dropped me off at the platform before walking up to a random young woman and saying “Hi, this is Paula, she’s going to Galway too. Can you look after her on the train?” Although I cringed at the time, I look back on it now with a pang of sentimentality.
The response to Allsopp was split into several camps. On one side were the people talking about themselves and what they did back in the day, and how it did them no harm. “Back in the 1970s I snuck off to Amsterdam aged 14”; “When I was 17, I went to Australia on my own and it did me no harm.” Allsopp herself returned to the theme over subsequent days to explain that she hoped “the silver lining of all this fuss is that a debate has begun about how we best help teenagers become confident, capable adults, and how factually and realistically we perceive risk”.
On the other, were those who were aghast at what they saw as her recklessness – including, presumably, the anonymous person who reported her. Posting on Instagram last week, Allsopp said: “I thought his trip was inspiring, and it never occurred to me in a million years that a call from children services would be involved, it’s been a huge shock, not least for Oscar.”
Then there were those who, like me, are the ones left to pick up the pieces – the ones in charge of looking after the so-called “unaccompanied minors”.
Because let me tell you something, after a decade of dealing with unaccompanied minors on flights, although Allsopp isn’t there, there are doubtless many caring adults who will see the young boys travelling alone and step in to make sure they are looked after.
She is lucky that there is a proverbial village who will usually take over. As soon as I find out there’s a minor travelling alone on my flight, I take them under my wing and make sure they are safe for as long as they’re on the plane. I’ve even accompanied them through customs and done the Irish mammy trick of then passing them on to the next responsible adult I can find.
I look at a young boy travelling on his own and think ah bless, I’ll look after him, and it takes me back to that train platform to Galway when I was a teenager myself. But not every adult will look at a young 15-year-old boy and have such a benevolent attitude. And that is what fundamentally worries me about Allsopp’s defiant defence of her actions.
Yes, we’ve all done mad, reckless stuff when we were too naive to know the dangers, but not usually with our parents’ blessing. In all the online reaction to Allsopp’s behaviour, I didn’t see one parent who said they would let their own underage teens go inter-railing solo.
Paula Gahan is a London-based Irish crew member for an international airline and hosts the The Bad Air Hostess podcast on Apple and Spotify. She is from Kildare.
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