the many other sounds that come out of the mouth—
sneezes, coughs, and burps do not name objects. In
word learning, children must assume that words gen-
erally refer to categories of objects, actions, and
events. This means that there is not a different name
for every table or chair that one encounters in the en-
vironment. To learn a grammar, young minds must
detect patterns of words but not pay attention, for ex-
ample, to the syllable structure of every fifth word.
Nature provides the starting points for language de-
velopment, and nurture (the environment) drives the
course of that development over time.
Given this interactive view of language, the job
for the language scientist of the future is both to iden-
tify the selective tendencies of the mind and to see
how, in concert with particular inputs, these built-in
tendencies allow the child to construct a system that
is capable of creating language performances over
and over again throughout the course of a human life.
The language orchestra, then, is a product of mem-
bership in the human species. Humans are given the
instruments and the starting points. The language
that a person hears around her everyday fine-tunes
her sound and helps her build her repertoire. And
each child becomes the conductor who pulls all of the
components together in a flawless performance that
is virtually completed by the time she is three years
of age.
See also: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE
Bibliography
Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. How Babies
Talk. New York: Dutton/Penguin, 2000.
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
LATCHKEY CHILDREN
Latchkey children are defined by the authors of The
Facts on File Dictionary of Education as: ‘‘School-aged
children who are typically unsupervised after school
hours because of working parents and, therefore, who
carry a house key to let themselves in after school.’’
This straightforward definition overlooks children
who have a parent at home, but the parent offers little
or no appropriate adult supervision. Children and
young teenagers who have access to some type of
after-school care but fail to attend that care on some
days and so are unsupervised are also overlooked by
this definition. Siblings not much older than those
they supervise may also inadequately care for young
children. The term ‘‘latchkey children’’ also promotes
a number of stereotypes not yet clearly born out in
empirical studies. Examples of such stereotypes in-
clude all latchkey children: are more likely to abuse
tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs; are more sexually
active; are poorer students academically; have inade-
quate self-concepts; are more self-reliant; are more
fearful, apprehensive, and insecure; have little inner
control; and are more likely to be involved in criminal
activity compared to adult-supervised peers. Given
the stereotypes attached to the term ‘‘latchkey chil-
dren,’’ it might better be replaced with a term such as
‘‘unsupervised children’’ or ‘‘self-care children.’’Prevalence
There is evidence that the number of children
needing before- and after-school care is growing. Two
factors are of particular importance in this growth.
First, the number of single-parent families has grown
at an astounding rate since the 1970s. According to
the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the number of family
groups maintained by one parent grew from 3.8 mil-
lion in 1970 to 11.8 million in 1998. Second, there are
more mothers of school-age children in two-parent
families choosing to enter the out-of-home workforce.
From 1986 to 1998, the number of husband and wife
couples in the workforce grew from 25.4 million to
30.6 million.
Estimates of the number of unsupervised or inad-
equately supervised children range from 3.5 million
to 17.5 million for children between the ages of five
and fourteen. The large discrepancy in estimates is
mainly due to the variety of definitions. Some esti-
mates include only children who have no supervision;
others include those with no adult supervision. Still
other estimates include those who are inadequately
supervised, periodically unsupervised, or supervised
by a parent or other adult who is emotionally or psy-
chologically unavailable. No matter which estimate is
used, it is clear that too many children do not receive
the supervision that would maximize their physical,
social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual devel-
opment.Dilemmas for Parents
Parents work outside the home because they de-
sire to be in the workforce or because they feel that
they have financial needs. Lois Hoffman, in a 1974
study, found that children did better when parents
were in their preferred situation (working outside the
home or being home with the children) than when
they were in their nonpreferred situation. Parents
with the greatest financial needs but limited financial
resources are often surprised to find that it actually
costs more for the second person to work outside the
home than that person earns. Thus, such parents are
less able to meet their financial obligations when both232 LATCHKEY CHILDREN