Leaving Teens Home Alone

There's good reason to think carefully about leaving your kids home alone. While the media picks up and exploits worst-case "home alone" scenarios for shock value, the facts about teen self-care are nonetheless disturbing. For example:

• Sociologists call teens home alone the most dangerously neglected and at-risk population in our country.
• Fifty-seven percent of children under age 18 lack full-time parental supervision (source: U.S. Census Studies).
• Teens are left home alone much longer and more often than any other age group (source: Carnegie Task Force on Youth Development).
• The epidemic number of teenage pregnancies occurs mostly from sexual intercourse during unsupervised after-school hours (source: Carnegie Task Force on Youth Development).
• Teenage crime, especially violent crime by youngsters ages 14 to 17, has exploded, according to Dean James Alan Fox of Northeastern University's College of Criminal Justice.
• Teens commit serious crimes mostly between the unsupervised hours of 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

Clearly, teen self-care is a major parenting priority. And our willingness to make careful and informed decisions is crucial to helping solve what is a growing national problem.

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