British TV Star in Trouble With Child Services After Letting a 15-Year-Old Take a Trip
Kirstie Allsopp posted online about her teen son's trip around Europe. Then someone reported her to the government.
British TV personality Kirstie Allsopp let her 15-year-old go on a three-week train trip around Europe with a friend, age 16. Allsopp then published a proud, happy comment about it on X—which has prompted an investigation by child protective services.
Last week, Allsopp wrote this:
My little boy has returned from 3 weeks inter-railing, he'll be 16 on Wednesday so he went with a mate who's already 16 due to hostel/travel restrictions, but they organised the whole thing; Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, Marseille, Toulouse, Barcelona & Madrid 1/3
— Kirstie Allsopp (@KirstieMAllsopp) August 19, 2024
The post inspired plenty of nostalgia from folks fondly recalling their own youthful travels. But many others criticized her, raising all the usual raucous: He's too young. Anything could have happened. The world is unsafe. And so on.
Allsopp came out fighting. Sure, every kid is different, but "the danger is in underestimating them, not in setting them free," she told the world in a Daily Mail article. Her mother-in-law, she noted, went off to college at age 15. Her father-in-law joined the Merchant Navy in World War II at age 16. Were their parents neglectful?
Maybe that depends on who you ask.
Allsopp received a text from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), her local child protective services agency. A social worker told Allsopp that she was obliged by law to look into any case that anyone called into the agency. Allsopp asked who had made the call. The agency would not say. Allsopp tried to explain that it was probably someone who disapproved from afar and was trying to teach her a lesson (like in this case). The agency said that didn't matter. The social worker added that it was "standard practice" for the agency's case file regarding the matter to remain open until her child turned 25.
That's quite a long time to consider someone a child, let alone a victim.
In this case, the problem is not just the blood sport of mom blaming. It's also that the government is given no freedom to err on the side of common sense. Agents are obligated to be obtuse and obsess over imaginary physical dangers to children while ignoring how all of this requisite paranoid parenting might negatively impact kids' mental health. Overprotected kids are actually in danger of depression, anxiety, and passivity.
Allsopp herself admits that she said no when her son first proposed the trip. But then she thought about it more and realized he was ready for this adventure—that it was her job as a good parent to safeguard his confidence, self-respect, development, and joy in life by letting him go.
"It's up to parents to decide who is or isn't grown-up enough to start spreading their wings," she wrote.
In the U.S. at least, eight states have passed "Reasonable Childhood Independence" laws stating that neglect is when a parent puts a child in serious, obvious, unreasonable danger—not any time a parent lets the kids do something by themselves. Maybe it's time to adopt a similar law across the pond.
