Internal resources include emotional stability, positive role modeling and education. External resources include such things as a strong network of supportive adults, financial stability, health care, and a safe neighborhood. You can tell a caring single mother that it is not healthy for her child to be babysat by the television, but if the mother is making minimum wage, and does not have access to adequate childcare, her choices are limited and the television may continue as babysitter. But changes in family life are not limited to poorer families. Another major change for children in the past 25 years is the amount of time they are left on their own, away from parents and other caring adults.
More children now live in households where all the adults work outside the home.
Many children spend less time with their parents and are often unsupervised for hours each day before their parents return from work. In total, nearly 5 million school-age children are left home alone each week. The lack of stimulating experiences and intellectual enrichment is a problem not only in poor neighborhoods. It has spread through middle-class and wealthy populations, as the dramatic upheavals in the traditional family cast an increasing number of youngsters adrift. Unlike many European and Asian societies, which invest time and energy in their children, American society is apparently becoming less willing to do that.