Research Paper on:
Perspectives of Working Parents and Children

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Much has been written, speculated and researched over the years regarding the effects that latchkey status can have on children. Early research indicated that unsupervised afternoon time  was detrimental to children, but later research almost always is consistent in its findings that latchkey status is not generally harmful to children.  One characteristic of working families that latchkey research generally has not addressed is that of parental attitudes and perceptions about their children being home unattended for several hours each day.  The purpose of this current research is to correlate childrens and parents attitudes toward latchkey status to discover any mutual effects that the arrangement carries for both parents and  children. Literature Review Waldfogel, Han and Brooks-Gunn (2002) investigated the issue of latchkey children again, many years after the issue first became a  topic of concern among parents, educators and others interested in childrens welfare. These researchers used data from "the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth on 1,872 children who can be  followed from birth to age 7 or 8" (Waldfogel, Han and Brooks-Gunn, 2002; p. 369) to find support for both sides of issues surrounding debate concerning effects of non-parental day  care. Waldfogel, Han and Brooks-Gunn (2002) "found some persistent adverse effects of first-year maternal employment and some positive effects of second- and third-year maternal employment on cognitive outcomes for  non-Hispanic white children, but not for African American or Hispanic children" (p. 369), easing the fears of parents of non-Hispanic white children but perhaps increasing them among African-American and Hispanic  groups. The effects that Waldfogel, Han and Brooks-Gunn (2002) found to be present persisted even after the researchers "controlled for a range of