latchkey
lach kee
- n key for raising or drawing back a latch or opening an outside door
- For all the headlines about the time crunch and the lost generation of latchkey kids, today's parents actually spend more time with their children than parents did in 1965.
- Perhaps the most publicly visible symptoms of the dilemma, and the most pathetic, are the "latchkey kids.
- Economists warned in 1999 that working parents had 22 fewer hours of family time than they did 30 years before, which set off alarms about neglected latchkey children growing up .