How to Use latchkey in a Sentence

latchkey

noun

• Gates, who moved to Arizona as a teen-ager, was a latchkey kid whose idea of entertainment was watching C-Span.
  — Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, 2 Aug. 2021
• Root cause of violence, which is unattended, latchkey kids or kids running the streets.
  — Laura Johnston, cleveland, 13 Jan. 2023
• Until the family moved to London, young Coxon was adrift, a latchkey kid drawing ghouls in his notebooks, unsure of his place in the world.
  — Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 2023
• As latchkey kids in an often harsh environment, the Gunners found that the most effective defense against pain was the denial of it.
  — Xhenet Aliu, New York Times, 11 May 2018
• For Wiseman, the basic question of what exactly is a library in these digital days becomes a latchkey to a wider world.
  — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 14 Oct. 2017
• Jaeckle grew up on Long Island, a latchkey kid with a hard-working single mom and an insatiable appetite.
  — Sam Sifton, New York Times, 11 May 2017
• Batman is a loner, and as an ‘80s latchkey kid Cully Hamner related to that.
  — Matt Wake | [e-mail], al, 26 Aug. 2021
• The trains link the wealthy urban core with its ramshackle outskirts, packed with exhausted workers, street preachers, latchkey kids and these Staff Riding daredevils.
  — Brendan Seibel, WIRED, 1 May 2014
• Yes, today’s helicopter and tiger parents were once latchkey kids, nuking solitary French bread pizza dinners in the microwave.
  — Elisabeth Egan, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2021
• When the coronavirus pandemic started, some Gen X-ers bragged that they were uniquely suited for the lockdown, as former latchkey kids who were used to sitting around doing nothing.
  — Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 2 Sep. 2020
• The concept of a hometown story on the show has evolved since the podcast’s debut to include anything from childhood ghost sightings, to grandmothers with mafia connections, to the misadventures of latchkey kids.
  — Andrea Marks, Rolling Stone, 4 Nov. 2021
• Schoolchildren coming to an empty home for lunch because their mothers were working were disparaged as Schlüsselkinder, or latchkey kids.
  — Isabelle De Pommereau, The Christian Science Monitor, 23 Sep. 2020
• The scale here is smaller but no less existential: What happens to latchkey kids who are abandoned by their parents, whether literally or figuratively, and find ways to self-soothe?
  — Vulture, 23 Apr. 2022
• For those unable to secure adequate coverage, becoming a latchkey kid may be the only viable solution—even if that means kids need to make their own way home and supervise younger siblings.
  — Megan Leonhardt, Fortune, 30 Sep. 2022
• With a mother who was both mentally ill and regularly absent, Cox ended up bouncing between relations, an underfed latchkey kid with no stable home life.
  — Washington Post, 11 Jan. 2022
• Peanut butter aroma wafting through a space will take some people back to pleasant memories of school lunches, while others may recall a miserable latchkey upbringing or a low period during adulthood.
  — Beca Grimm, GQ, 11 Jan. 2018
• Perceptions of masculinity are informed by everything and everyone around us, and for me, a latchkey kid with hours of entertainment budgeted into each day, media played as significant a role in shaping those ideas as did my own parents.
  — Jordan Calhoun, The Atlantic, 20 Apr. 2018
• Shutdown orders across the nation prompted a flurry of half-joking speculation that Generation X, a cluster of former latchkey kids raised on pop culture that plumbed social alienation, was uniquely prepared to weather quarantining at home.
  — J.c. Pan, The New Republic, 22 Apr. 2020
• The sisters were latchkey kids, getting themselves to school and completing their homework, until their paternal grandmother eventually moved in after emigrating from Korea.
  — Ken Budd, Washington Post, 30 Nov. 2022

Last Updated: 4 Nov 2024