ABSTRACT
As previous chapters have shown, children’s after-school experiences vary in many ways. The presence or absence of adult supervision is only one area in on which after-school arrangements differ, and often this is not the most significant area for children. Adult supervision adds to the safety, direction, comfort, and happiness of many children, but to a few, it is a neutral or even negative aspect of their after-school lives. Unsupervised time is a lonely experience for many children, but a richly supported one for others. To some children, unsupervised time means freedom, while to others it represents valued responsibilities, and to still others it entails onerous restrictions. Unsupervised time leaves one child painfully adrift, liberates the creative energies of another, and feels irrelevant to a third. Some children have unusual inner resources or plentiful social support, while others do not. Children’s own appraisals of their after-school settings often seem more powerful than specific “objective” facts about the arrangements in accounting for children’s reactions.
