IT'S the most familiar of all journalistic clichés to say that for the last year – or, to be precise, for an agonising eleven months and nine days – Kate and Gerry McCann have been living through every parent's worst nightmare.
Like all the best clichés, though, this one happens to be true. Fears of abduction and loss stalk the minds of modern parents with a terrible insistence; and every story of a real-life murder or kidnap, affecting what looks like a "normal" British fa
mily, becomes the focus of emotions so powerful that those caught in the eye of the storm often seem bewildered by the huge social and psychological forces their pain has unleashed.
Nor are these forces in any way simple. As the McCanns have learned to their bitter cost, it can take no time at all for empathy and compassion to give way to the most cruel forms of hostility and criticism, and to ruthless attempts at emotional distancing from the suffering parents. And even a year on, the process continues. This week, the McCanns went to Brussels to make the case for a Europe-wide "Amber Alert" system for missing children, similar to the one in operation in the United States; and simultaneously, someone connected with the Portuguese authorities saw fit to leak material from the McCanns' early statements to the police, including the detail that Madeleine had complained that on the night before she disappeared, she and her little brother had been crying in their room, and no-one had heard them.
All of which will, of course, be grist to the mill of those who would like to believe that the McCanns lost their beautiful little daughter through negligence rather than misfortune; and that they should never have left their children sleeping and stepped across the courtyard to the tapas bar. Yet there are three good reasons why I don't think I will be joining the ranks of those who sit in judgment on them.
First, as someone who has never been a parent, I do not feel able or willing to make easy criticisms of those who take on the massive responsibility of parenthood, under 21st- century conditions. My own experience of caring for small children is limited, but I will never forget the intensity of the responsibility involved, the sheer weight of the moment-by-moment practical work entailed in keeping even one small child happy and comfortable. And the gradual decay of the extended family and traditional communities, along with the rise of increasingly individualistic attitudes to human behaviour and fulfilment, only increases that pressure on those who choose parenthood. So am I going to say that Kate and Gerry McCann were wrong to enjoy their evenings at the tapas bar, in a holiday complex where they believed their children were perfectly safe? I am not; nor, I think, is anyone who is prepared to be honest about the impossibility of sustaining the kind of flawless parental vigilance that some bullying commentators now seem to regard as essential.
Then secondly, I am not going to join in criticism of the McCanns, because I am profoundly wary of our growing cultural tendency to blame people for their own misfortunes, and to punish victims – whether of disease, bereavement, poverty, or any other grim fate – for not somehow making sure that they emerge among life's winners. This sadistic or dismissive attitude to people in misery is both intrinsically violent, and profoundly immature. Learning to face the possibility of arbitrary disaster with some degree of dignity and compassion is a key feature of adult behaviour; scapegoating and blame-shifting, by contrast, is an ugly form of emotional primitivism, which grown-ups should avoid.
And finally, I will not criticise the McCanns, because I do not want to live in a world where every decision is shaped by a hysterical and mean-minded overestimate of risk, particularly in relation to the behaviour of strangers. What happened to Madeleine was something much less than a one-in-a-million unlucky chance; and yet the suggestion is that we should shape our entire society, and in particular our attitude to the upbringing of children, around the false and sexually obsessive presumption that every unknown man who passes in the street is likely to be a murderous pervert, and every woman a sleazy accomplice in some child-abuse ring. To say that being raised in such an atmosphere does children no good is to understate the case. Many under-12s are visibly bereft of the sense of freedom, adventure, independence and physical vigour that comes with the occasional glorious escape from parental supervision; and we can only begin to guess – although young writers offer some frightening clues – how children are being affected by the growing emotional claustrophobia.
Like all intelligent parents, in other words, the McCanns made judgment calls about the right balance between care and freedom, for themselves and their children; and on that fatal night in the Algarve, their confidence – in life, in the people around them, in the relaxed atmosphere of a happy family holiday – proved to be unfounded. But I do not think that they were wrong to show that confidence. For without that kind of trust in the future and in each other, life in any human society becomes ugly, and eventually unsustainable. And if we seek to turn the misery of the McCanns into a false moral lesson, we will soon begin to learn just how unpleasant that kind of social future can be – without joy, good fellowship and the conviviality within which children flourish, and grow strong.
The full article contains 948 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
