Participation Factors

1) My after-school experiences, growing up were influenced by many different factors. I

was fortunate enough to have parents who had time and money to spend on my after-school care.
In the chapter, “Children’s Organized Activities,” by Vandell, she discusses five predictors that
affect participation in after-school programs. I, myself was affected by all of those predictors.
The predictors being, child characteristics, family characteristics, peers and friendships, school
and community, and program characteristics.
The first one being child characteristics, specifically competency. In the article, she talks
about how when children move from middle school into high school, they drop out of activities
because they believe that they are “not good enough,” this is something that I can relate to. I was
involved in many different sports and activities when I was in elementary as well as middle
school, but as I got older, I began to drop out of most of those activities. I was always afraid that
I was not good enough in many of the activities I participated in, but it did not matter much to
me what other people thought until I started getting older. I realized that some people are so
much better than I was and because of the fear of being laughed at, I dropped out of most of my
activities as time went on. I ended up playing only soccer out of the many different activities I
was involved in. Another one is family characteristics, specifically income. My father was
fortunate enough to be able to be the sole provider for our family and make a good living. My
family was in the middle class, and so we were able to try a variety of different activities. My
brother and I tried out many different sports and activities because of our interests as well as our
development. My mother and father were eager to see us participate in extracurricular activities,
so they were not hesitant in spending money on my brother and me when we would take an
interest in something.
Yet another factor discussed in Vandell’s article is the factor of peers and friendship. This
was very evident in my life because I was usually involved in activities that my friends were also
interested in such as karate. My friend and I began going together and continued to attend
because of the fact that we were able to be together, have fun, as well as pursue our common
interest. That being said, we also stopped attending together, when my friend became more
interested in Armenian dance, I quit karate after she did and we joined Armenian dance together.
The fourth factor affecting my after-school experiences school and community factors,
specifically school context. My school had ample resources, so they were able to provide for a
variety of different activities that I took advantage of. One being, music, my school had a large
music department which provided a variety of different instruments to choose from, so because
of this, I played the violin as well as the guitar during elementary school. The fifth factor
affecting my after-school experiences is the program characteristics. This really was a big factor
in whether or not I stuck to a program. Having the right guidance for example for soccer, led me
to continue playing throughout high school. When learning how to play, I had a coach that was
very knowledgeable and had a lot of experience under his belt, so I was able to develop enough
skill to get into the team at my high school and continue enjoying my time playing.

2) In the article, "Should We Care About Adolescents Who Care for Themselves? What We
Have Learned and What We Need to Know About Youth in Self-Care" by Joseph Mahoney, he
talks about the benefits as well as the disadvantages that self-care can bring. Mahoney states on
the topic of self-care, which has to do with unsupervised time, “The bulk of studies have found
that regular and durable experience in self-care is associated with poor developmental
consequences, including high levels of substance use… aggression, deviance, and misconduct…
fear and anxiety… and low academic performance and school attendance” (191). This being
said, looking at my experiences, I can say that having a structured environment outside of school
has given me the opportunity to grow a large number of my skills and allowed me to figure out
my own interests. Although this may not be looked at as important life skills, it helped me in my
academic career, as well as in the development of a healthy body.
Although it did provide me with those benefits, Mahoney continues to state, “...
unsupervised time, per se, does not necessarily constitute a risk. Instead, risk depends in part on
whether the social conditions of self-care provide opportunities that ‘‘encourage’’ youth to
engage in risky behaviors” (191). Looking at this research as well, I can not say for certain that I
would have had negative experiences had I not been provided with the opportunities that I had. I
lived in a relatively safe community with not much juvenile behavior so I might not have been
involved in such things. That being said, the experiences with my participation in activities has
been a positive one that has helped my emotional, physical, as well as mental development.