Introduction

If you are like many parents, your child comes home from school at least an hour before you finish your own workday. In the first few years of elementary school, after-school arrangements for your child may have included traditional daycare, care by a relative or neighbor, an after-school program sponsored by your school district, or perhaps you or another parent were able to care for your child after school owing to a flexible work schedule.

If you are reading this, you are probably considering allowing your child to have some unsupervised time after school-that is, time during which your child is not directly supervised by an adult. This article provides some guidance to parents to ensure appropriate and safe self-care arrangements.

Basic Facts About Self-Care

Although reports of the number of children in the United States in self-care arrangements vary depending on the study, researchers estimate that self-care is the primary after-school arrangement for about 4% of children between the ages of 5 and 12. Another report estimates that about 10% of 10- to 12-year-olds practice self-care. This percentage continues to rise for older children, with self-care estimates of about 17% for children between the ages of 12 and 14.

Children of all races and ethnicities, from both rural and urban areas, single-parent and two-parent households, and all socioeconomic levels are in self-care arrangements.

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