RaisingChildrenToday

A Time of Misguided Mischief?Call them the desperate hours. Every day when school lets out, millions of children -- many of them middle- and high-schoolers -- head home to empty houses. Often, they're on their own until dinnertime or later -- not by choice, but by necessity. While they may be mature enough to avoid setting the house ablaze, each afternoon is still a potential minefield to be navigated.

It's a minefield embedded with sex, drugs and alcohol, Internet porn, violent video games, extreme risk-taking, and perhaps worst of all, loneliness.

But families have little choice. With more parents working full-time outside the home than ever before, it's no surprise that the number of so-called latchkey kids in the United States is also at an all-time high. Up to 15 million of the country's 49 million school-age children spend a portion of the workweek on their own; almost a third do so at least three days a week. Some experts doubt that's the whole story.

"It's very hard to get real statistics about this," says Sherryll Kraizer, executive director of the Denver-based Safe Child Program. "There is such a stigma that people don't always tell the whole truth about it."

It's easy to see why. Recent research about what kids are up against when they must fend for themselves paints a bleak picture. One study found that the more time teens spend unsupervised, the more likely they are to be sexually active and contract a sexually transmitted disease (25 percent of 15 million new STDs each year occur among teens). Another study, this one of eighth-graders, found that those who care for themselves 11 hours or more a week are twice as likely as those who don't to drink, smoke cigarettes or use marijuana.

The afternoon hours are also perilous when it comes to crime. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that the incidence of violent juvenile crime peaks between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. -- roughly the same span during which children are most likely to be violent-crime victims. The computer is hardly a safe harbor. With home-alone kids spending more time online -- surfing websites, chatting with friends -- law enforcement authorities say they're seeing sexual predators flock to the Internet during the afternoon hours.

"The level of activity is up in chat rooms after 3 p.m.," says Curtis Lavarello, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers. "Pedophiles know that."

All this leads some pediatric health experts to a fundamental conclusion: "The lack of adult involvement is one of the greatest risk factors for negative behavior," says Robert Blum, chair of population and family health at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore. In fact, he and others believe it's a greater risk factor than race, ethnicity, family income or family structure. "And the more unstructured time, the more negative behavior."

Encourage Good BehaviorLike working parents everywhere, Barbara White, an advertising sales manager, knows the risks. Her 14-year-old son Match flies solo pretty much every afternoon. She copes the only way she can. She picks up the phone.

"I worry about Match getting bored," says White, a single mom in North Carolina. "I call to check in. I don't want him to feel lonely, so when I call, I ask him what he's up to, what he feels like for dinner, and I tell him I love him. He acts annoyed when I call. But I know that he'd miss it if I stopped doing it."

Teenagers know boredom is their biggest enemy. A December report by the New York City-based nonprofit Public Agenda found some three-quarters of teens agreeing that "a lot of kids get into trouble when they're bored and have nothing to do." Peer pressure is a close second: In the same survey, nearly two-thirds of teens agreed their parents "would be very upset if they knew some of the things my friends have done."

Against that backdrop, it's fairly remarkable that the latest teen behavior trends aren't all bad. Indeed, some are quite positive. For instance, teenagers are actually having less -- and safer -- sex. Teen pregnancy has begun to drop. Alcohol and drug use have dipped too. And juvenile crime is steady over the past five years.

The Reader's Digest Family Index survey may offer another positive sign: Seven in ten parents say that when left alone, their oldest child spends at least some time studying; 25 percent say a "great deal of time." It makes sense if you consider that University of Michigan researchers reported last year that today's kids spend nearly seven hours a week more in school and on schoolwork than children did 20 years ago. It's hard to get into trouble if you're busy hitting the books.

Still, Mary Eberstadt, the author of Home-Alone America, argues that bad behavior remains too common among teens. In her book, published in November, she rejects the latchkey label. She prefers the term "self-care"; she thinks it more accurately describes what's really going on. Calling the trend a "hidden epidemic," Eberstadt ties it to everything from the national surge in childhood obesity to the growing treatment of children with Ritalin and other psychotropic drugs. "There just are not enough adults to go around after school," she says.

Blum and others believe teachers can play a big role by transforming their schools into more nurturing environments. He also argues for more and better after-school programs. (The Afterschool Alliance reported last May that parents of 15.3 million kids not enrolled in after-school programs would sign up if such programs existed.)

But the ultimate responsibility lies with parents. And teens don't mind: Public Agenda's survey found almost nine in ten agreeing that "even though I might complain about it, sometimes I need to be pushed by my parents to do things that are good for me." That may be a wake-up call for many adults: One 2004 poll found that only one in four believe they have more influence than peers over their adolescent kids.

Experts say that parents ought to acknowledge how much is being asked of kids left alone, and tell them they'd rather it didn't have to be that way. "We have to recognize that it isn't easy for young people," says David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts University.

And former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher says parents can make it easier by refusing to let those afternoon absences weaken family bonds.

"In the final analysis," says Satcher, director of the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine, "it's really not the amount of time you spend, but the quality."