Libraries Struggle in Role as Child Care Providers

Upstairs at the San Marino Public Library, barely visible among the narrow, aging aisles, Max leans against a wooden bench. Books, friends and backpacks are sprawled around him.

Max, who is barely 4 feet tall, says he is 11 years old. He wears baggy jeans and a designer shirt and looks like every librarian’s dream: a bookworm gnawing his way through the stacks every day after school.

Looks can be deceiving. Max is not here by choice.

“Both my parents work, so I have to come here every day after school,” he says.

Every librarian knows a Max, maybe dozens of Maxes. He’s a national epidemic.

Each day, thousands of children, some as young as 4, are left unattended at public libraries across the country.

As more and more parents find themselves trapped in the child care quandary, the local library is becoming one of the paths out of it.

Old rules have been tossed overboard as the wave of latchkey children swamps these sometimes frail old institutions--places that, a generation ago, seemed likely to be bypassed in the rush of the Information Age. Some libraries are so crowded today that there are not enough chairs. Children slump on the floors. Silence is a thing of the past.

Librarians complain that this does not solve the child care problem; it merely passes it on to them.

“We aren’t baby-sitters,” said Terri Maguire, South Pasadena’s city librarian. “We don’t provide day care. We aren’t responsible for the children.”

The parents who fail to heed Maguire’s words are leaving librarians with a painful dilemma: Spend scarce resources to accommodate the children or limit their access.

Tired of seeing children left alone after library closing time, or just too young to be left alone at all, some libraries reluctantly are beginning to penalize parents.

From Massachusetts to California, they have begun enforcing a minimum age for unsupervised children. Some libraries call police if parents do not appear within 15 minutes of closing. San Marino, one of Los Angeles County’s oldest old-money suburbs, votes tonight on an ordinance that would make it one of the first cities in the country to fine parents whose children are left alone outside at closing time.

“Some of the people [who work at the library] are having to choose between being late for their own children and waiting for the parents to arrive,” San Marino City Manager Deborah Bell said.

At Long Beach’s 11 branch libraries, parents obtaining a library card for a child must pledge not to leave a child under 10 in the library unsupervised.

And in South Pasadena, a new sign on the door of the city’s small, two-story library proclaims: “Attention Parents: Children Under the Age of 11 Must Be Accompanied by an Adult Over the Age of 18.”

Some Libraries Impose New Rules

For a decade, South Pasadena had a rule saying that no one younger than 13 should be alone in the library, but it was never enforced. Things got so bad last September that the library board lowered the age to 11 with stricter enforcement and the sign.

“A library isn’t a safe haven. Anyone can come in a library, and I mean anyone,” Maguire said. “Parents would never think of dropping an 8-year-old off at the mall alone.”

Maguire said the sign has encouraged a few parents to come inside with their children. South Pasadena, like many libraries, employees a monitor--a kind of child-watcher--and offers 400 programs a year for children.

She said the problem in South Pasadena pales in comparison to that in Palmdale, where she worked until last year. “We had kids whose parents were two hours away in L.A. One time I looked up and there was a boy swinging on the outside of the staircase.”

You would hardly expect Indiana’s Bloomfield-Eastern Greene County Public Library, which serves a community of 2,500, to be similarly plagued. But when children started getting left there for several hours a day last summer, officials reacted by drawing up a policy saying that no child younger than 11 should be there alone.

“We’re a small town, but young kids shouldn’t be left alone for several hours,” children’s librarian Linda Peterson said. Some libraries see no choice but to serve the children, regardless of why they’re there. Many librarians say that they have a duty to pick up the slack in communities where child care options are limited.

“We feel the public library is a place for people of all ages,” said Penny Markey, Los Angeles County Library children’s services coordinator, who believes policies to keep out unsupervised children are unenforceable.

1,000 Children With Nowhere Else to Go

In 20 of Los Angeles County’s 87 branch libraries, afternoon homework centers work with latchkey children. “We have 1,000 children daily with nowhere else to go,” Markey said.

At Los Angeles city libraries, a special program trains volunteer grandparents to read to children who are alone. Similar programs exist across the nation.

The New York Public Library, for example, offers 30,000 programs for children each year, said Caroline Oyama, manager of public relations.

“We have a lot of unattended children,” Oyama said “Every librarian has a story of a young kid left when the library closes. But we want children in our libraries.”

In New York’s East Harlem, as many as 200 unattended children a day head to the Aguilar branch of the library, where there is seating for fewer than half of them, according to staff. It is a branch surrounded by 46 public schools and numerous housing projects.

“Thousands of kids go to the library after school because cutbacks have meant there [are very few] programs for youths,” Oyama said.

Many latchkey children are not readily identifiable until something happens to draw attention to them, Los Angeles library coordinator Markey said. Still, staffers know them by sight if not by name. At some libraries, whole families of latchkey children are regulars, young siblings in the care of older brothers or sisters who are barely teenagers themselves.

“We had one situation with four children, where the oldest one was 8 and the youngest 4, who would come regularly. We finally had to get the police to get the parents to understand,” said Linda Wilson, Monterey Park city librarian. “An 8-year-old is not old enough to care for other children.”

Wilson’s library is so busy that the city is building another floor.

Many libraries cope by expanding. A smaller number--roughly estimated at 25%--are imposing new age rules. Many others, fearing potential liabilities, adopt a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. They avoid introducing programs or policies even acknowledging the unsupervised children.

“If you adopt a policy, you’re saying you are going to do something and you’ve got to keep that promise, and I am reluctant to promise any sort of service,” said Arcadia Librarian Kent Ross. He said librarians are not trained care providers and have no legal control over children. Arcadia’s large, spacious library plays host to hundreds of children daily. In some cubbyholes, youngsters finish up homework assignments while others nap or talk. Parents are few and far between.

Teenage boys in the computer room are on the Internet. Outside, young girls run around the parking lot.

Amy complains that she is bored but has to stay until 5:30 p.m. when her mother gets home.

Children, of course, have for decades gone to the library after school. But an increasing number of those without supervision are far from model students prepared to abide by the rules.

Silence no longer prevails.

In San Marino, children from the neighboring middle and elementary schools make up the vast majority of users. More than 100 a day flock to the library, a circular 1951 piece of architecture with the acoustics of an aircraft hangar.

Irene McDermott, San Marino’s reference librarian, knows the latchkey children by sight. There are some days, she said, particularly when the weather is bad, when it can be hard to find a seat. The noise level is high. “We don’t shush kids anymore,” said McDermott. “Some of our older users are quite shocked to find children talking.”

As McDermott speaks, a few feet away a boy and girl giggle over a book. A teenage girl flips open a cellular phone and begins a conversation. Others read. They chat. They eat.

Small groups sit outside waiting for parents.

A father stops to pick up his son. Approached by a reporter, he shrugs his shoulders and walks away when asked questions about leaving children at the library. Library officials say that parents can take the issue very personally; confrontations can be angry and ugly.

Far from all the controversy, up in the second-floor stacks, there is evidence of at least one clear benefit arising out of this mess.

At least now, Max said, he gets his homework done.