Forty-eight self-care children were compared with 48 matched children in adult care to investigate whether the self-care ("latchkey") arrangement has negative consequences for children. On several measures of children's social and psychological functioning, no significant differences were found between the two matched samples. Virtually no research has been done on self-care, even though there are large numbers of children involved. Growing public and policy concerns about self-care suggest the need for much more research on the nature of the self-care arrangement and its consequences.arrangements for preschool and school-age children, even though there are far more children in such arrangements. For example, in 1974 there were 1.8 million children in the United States between the ages of 7 and 13 years who regularly cared for themselves during out-of-school hours (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1976); some current estimates are much higher. 1 This contrasts with approximately 900,000 preschool children who attended day care centers 2 in 1976-1977 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1980).Not only are there more children in selfcare than in day care centers, but there is also a growing recognition of the importance of the school-age years for a child's development. Many professionals have recently expressed strong concerns about the welfare of latchkey children (Genser & Baden, 1980;Turkington, 1983). This concern runs ahead of the available evidence. We could only
This Comment responds to an article by Steinberg (1986) in which he stressed the desirability of investigating a wide variety of after-school experiences when examining consequences for latchkey (self-care) children. In presenting his results, he inadvertently confounded latchkey children with adolescents who spend time at a friend's house or who "hang out" with friends without adult supervision. Steinberg reported that these adolescents showed greater susceptibility to peer pressure to engage in antisocial activities. We point out that these adolescents do not fit the usual conceptualization of latchkey children and that Steinberg's study may lend support to practitioners and policy makers who assume negative latchkey consequences in the absence of research evidence. To avoid future confusion we indicate the need for a definition of latchkey children and offer a tentative definition.
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