Especially for Parents

News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
June 2005

It's That Time Of Year Again…

The kids are grateful to be out of school, pleased to have long, hot days free from scholastic responsibilities. However, in many dual income homes and single parent households, that can also mean freedom from supervision for greater periods of time, despite that fact that adult supervision is just as important to the health and safety of teens as it is to younger children. There's a lot that can go wrong during an unsupervised summer.

And, according to data released by The Urban Institute, there are a lot of children and teenagers that are left unsupervised for extended periods of time during summer vacation while their parents are at work. The study was released on April 29, 2004, by the "nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization."

According to the report, "11 percent of 6- to 12-year olds are regularly in self-care during the summer" and "28 percent of 10- to 12-year-olds are in self-care during the summer." Interestingly, the report found that "higher-income children are more likely to care for themselves in the summer than low-income children." However, the report is also careful to point out these data are based on parental self-reports and respondents may underreport behaviors that they feel are socially undesirable," such as often leaving "their children alone or with a sibling younger than 13."

Teenagers tend to be left at home alone more frequently and for greater periods of time than are younger children, especially during the summer break. And, while there are many who will, for one purpose or another, tout the benefits of such experiences - the fostering of independence and responsibility, for example - the fact remains that all of the results of leaving kids unsupervised are not positive.

On June 7, 2005, an Oakland Tribune headline announced "Underage Prostitution Reaching Crisis Level on the Streets of Oakland." Officials have seen a steady increase in the number of underage prostitutes, according to the report, but in the "last 18 months, it has exploded."

"It's a geographic epidemic," said Nola Brantley, who is director of parenting and youth enrichment for the George Scotlan Youth Center in West Oakland, as reported by the Oakland Tribune. "The numbers are growing, and the girls are younger and younger. A few years ago we saw girls in the older end of junior high school age. Now we're seeing girls entering junior high school. Twelve-year-olds are giving strangers (oral sex) for $3."

As shocking as this is, there's more. While the majority of these girls do come from "severely dysfunctional families, if they have families at all," according to the Oakland Tribune report, "nearly 30 percent are from stable, two-parent families and are following the lead of friends in the neighborhood."

"It's normal for young girls in the city," Brantley said, as quoted by the newspaper. "They're not embarrassed to tell their friends they've worked as a prostitute. To them it is part of normal culture. It is so rampant. The models are everywhere." Indeed, she goes on to cite "rap culture in conjunction with the larger popular culture promote the image of women as prostitutes," quoting a popular lyric and typical representation in which a rapper refers to using his bitch "as an ATM card."

It is not only in the street that unsupervised youth can get into trouble. According to an article by Deborah A. Cohen, When and Where Do Youths Have Sex? The Potential Role of Adult Supervision, published in the December 2002 issue of Pediatrics, a full 9 out of 10 of the sexually active adolescents surveyed said that the last time they had sex was in a home, either their own, that of their sex partner or a friend's.

Cohen also wrote that boys left home alone for more than 5 hours per week were two times as likely to become infected with gonorrhea or Chlamydia, and that both boys and girls who were left in self care for longer periods of time were more likely to have a greater number of sexual partners across the span of their lives.

Children in self-care for extended periods during the summer months are vulnerable to harms that their more supervised counterparts are less likely to encounter. As the headline of a June 1, 2005, Market Wire press release for I-Safe America, an Internet safety organization, states, "Internet predators do not take a 'summer vacation'."

The June 3, 2005, issue of the online Safe Kids/Net Family Newsletter contains an important heads-up for parents concerning the protection of their children from Internet predators. Blogging has become very popular among teens and preteens and there are a number of sites that provide such services, including MySpace.com, Xanga.com and Friendster.com.

"I must admit, I myself didn't see the danger in these sites early on," said a San Francisco elementary/middle technology teacher at a private school, as quoted in the newsletter. "The students post their online journals, and the content is most alarming. They are uploading their pictures, lying about their ages, yet posting the school they attend, their birth date, what they do after school, places they hang out, discuss their sexuality - and the language is some of the most offensive I have ever read."

"These sites are like a candy store for predators," continued the teacher. "Especially since the kids actually, truly believe that their journals are 'private.' They struggle with the concept that NOTHING is private about posting to the Web."

Parents have got to be knowledgeable about their children's Internet use, and have got to teach Internet safety to their children. Posting too much personal information to a blog, or anywhere else (chat rooms, etc.) can result in serious, even deadly, harm to a youth targeted by a sexual predator.

And, of course, the recently proposed voluntary participation XXX Internet domain will do little to protect children from the explosion of pornography on the web - which is often used by pedophiles and predators to groom children for sexual abuse.

Many children spend far too much time watching television programs, especially during the free time of the summer break from school. On June 20, 2005, the El Paso Times ran a story that included statistics from a survey done by the makers of Neosporin. Of the mothers asked, 50% said that their children spent less than 5 hours a week playing outside. Also cited was data from the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, which found "many children spend four or more hours a day watching TV."

And, much of that television watching is unsupervised, even if parents are home. According to data from a tvturnoff.org fact sheet, 56% of 8- to 16-year-olds and 36% of children under 6 have a television in their bedroom. Furthermore, the fact sheets states that 81% of the time that 2- to 7-year-olds are watching TV, they are doing so "alone and unsupervised" and that 95% of the time that children over 7 spend watching TV is "without their parents."

Violence makes up a significant portion of typical TV fare, even for children. In a June 22, 2005, article concerning a rally at the Canon House Office Building about PBS funding and policy issues, published in The Hill, a newspaper "for and about the U.S. Congress," Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton made reference to the National Television Violence Study, stating "children are exposed to six acts of violence an hour, and violence on the so-called commercial 'children's shows' is on the rise." On June 9, 2005, the Indiana University School of Medicine issued a news release concerning yet another study indicating that exposure to violent media does affect children negatively.

The new study, published in this year's May/June issue of the Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography and led by Dr. Vincent Mathews of the IUSM, builds on earlier research, published in December of 2002, that "showed less brain activity in the frontal lobe of youths with an aggression disorder as they watched violent video games."

The new study sought to explore how media violence affected children without pre-existing aggression problems and, thus, used two groups of children. According to the news release, "all the members of one group had a chronic pattern of violent behavior and had been diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorder (DBD)" and "the second or control group had no history of behavior problems." Of the DBD group, 58% had high exposure to media violence, with 42% of the control group having similar exposure.

"The fMRI brain images revealed that members of the control group (those without a history of behavior problems) with high prior exposure showed less activity in the frontal cortex of the brain…All of the DBD group, even those without high violent media exposure, showed a similar pattern of frontal cortex activity. Less activity in the frontal cortex has been linked to poorer self control and attention problems," according to the IUSM release. "In contrast to the DBD group and the control group with high media violence exposure, the members of the control group without high violent media exposure showed more frontal cortex activity."

"This observation is the first demonstration of differences in brain function being associated with media violence exposure," said Dr. Mathews. "We found that individuals in the control group with high media violence exposure showed a brain activation pattern similar to the pattern of the aggressive group."

In other words, even so-called 'normal' children are affected by media violence, not just those with pre-existing problems.

Researchers and writers, such as Mary Eberstadt in Home Alone America, have written eloquently about the distressing trend in American culture for parents to parent less, spending increasingly less time with their children. She writes of trends that parallel the decrease in parental time and attention, including increases in premature sexual activity, sexual abuse, mental illness, and suicide. The suicide rates, especially, have increased shockingly with some statistics indicating that "the suicide rate for girls aged 10 to 14 rose 27 percent between 1979 and 1988" and an "increase for boys" of "71 percent."

One summer can change a child forever. It is important to note, however, for almost every potential danger that children face in today's world, parental supervision has been proven to be effective in reducing vulnerability to harm. "Tweens" and teens need our attention and supervision every bit as much as the little ones do.

Associated Links

Urban Institute, Summer Child Care Arrangements

Home Alone America by Mary Eberstadt, excellent

Detroit News, Find Comfort Levels Before Leaving Children Alone 6/16/05

News release from Indiana University School of Medicine

Internet Predators Do Not Take 'Summer Vacation', Marketwire press release