Missing 4-year-old’s saga triggers global debate

Different customs for kids
Friends of the McCanns have described them as doting, overprotective parents, insisting there is no way they could have imagined their child would be snatched from the resort compound while they sat so nearby.

Portuguese police have questioned the parents extensively as witnesses in the May 3 disappearance, but they have not been named as suspects in any crime. A 33-year-old British man who lives near the hotel has been questioned as the only suspect but was released for lack of evidence.

Jon Clarke, 34, a physics teacher in London, said parents in Britain are not encouraged to take children to restaurants, and that he would consider leaving his own 3-year-old alone if it was in a safe place where he could easily check on her.

“If you take children to a restaurant in Britain, it’s more often the attitude that the children shouldn’t be there, whereas in Spain, Italy, France, they’re more welcoming,” he said.

In Spain, which is famously child-friendly, what the McCanns did is all but unheard of. Spanish parents take their kids everywhere, and it is common to see small children running around a town square while parents have drinks well into the night.

“People just say, ‘Oh well, they’ll sleep late tomorrow,”’ said Ines Alberdi, a professor of sociology and family issues at Complutense University in Madrid.

Spaniards, she said, “do not totally separate children’s entertainment from parents’ entertainment. I think that is a very strong tradition here.”

Magda Carlan, a 37-year-old Portuguese housewife with daughters aged 2 and 4, blamed the McCanns for their own nightmare. “Children should never be left alone. It is wrong. When I go on vacation with small girls I am very careful.”

New interest in tracking devices
The media frenzy has whipped up a certain hysteria among many parents in Britain, resulting in a surge in interest in electronic tracking devices that could potentially help police find missing children.

Richard Howells, a professor of cultural and creative industries at King’s College in London, said the case has touched a nerve in Britain because it is so easy to identify with the family.

Many Britons vacation in the Algarve region of Portugal, where Praia da Luz is located, drawn by its reputation as an affordable family holiday destination.

“You can project yourself in that situation and you can feel how they’re feeling, how terrible it is,” he said. “Even though you don’t personally know them, you feel through the media that you can.”

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