“How is your summer?” A mother asked from the other side of the living room in a baby shower in June. I was standing with a small group of other moms from my daughter's classmates whom I had not seen since the school ended almost a month earlier.
“It's the best thing that happened to me,” I replied, honestly.
From the other side of the coffee table, his eyes opened, and his mouths bowed in incredulous shapes.
I understood the feeling. Mothers on the other side of the table work full -time work throughout the year that require child care that is disconnected for 11 weeks while the school is out. For them, that care usually seems a conglomerate of scattered camps that drastically increase their weekly mental load with transport challenges, different start and stop times, and clothing and supplies lists for each child and each camp. As a mother at the party described this stress, her eyes were filled with tears, and did not even address the ridiculous monetary cost of keeping her supervised children while she and her husband worked.
“You didn't record yourself in any camp, right?” Another mother finally asked.
“No.” I didn't do it. I am spending every day with my 5 and 6 year old son. Our only planned activity is an hour of the three morning swimming team a week that is administered by the swimming program of a local university and still feels exorbitantly expensive.
While the recent headlines and Videos of Tiktok about children who leave the camp to “rot” or become “wild” or return to the perfect approach to the results “of the 90s”, my family's conversation was really about the cause: the financial realities of fatherhood.
Like those mothers, I made my summer plans mainly for financial reasons. They need camp so they can go to work; As a teacher, I have flexibility during the summer and I do not need child care to work, and the camp would have cost more than my salary, anyway.
This last school year I returned to the classroom for my first full -time job since my eldest son was born in 2018, but I also continued my work in concert As independent journalist. While my work of 8-3 guaranteed a regular payment check in this very reliable means of media and matched the school hours of my children, so we would not have to pay for additional child care, the independent work remained most of my income. Therefore, I found myself an employee but I still participated in a “Infinite work day” While filling my nights and early mornings with writing.
By the time the first records of the camp were opened in January, he had shown that he could meet the deadlines outside the normal work hours, and the camp for two children was unjustifiably expensive. My husband agreed with my plan to give up the camp, and I tried to calm the blame that my children would lose art or sports enrichment.
Five months later, it was exactly a week in our time not scheduled when El Corte asked, “Why not let your children have a 'wild' summer?” The article advocated the benefits of leaving these months without planning: “Give spaces to children to feel a dreamy, inspired, excited or nothing at all.” A week later, the New York Times continued with his own question: “Is it okay that their children 'Prap' all summer?” In its exam, the article comes to declare that summer is “a raising rorschach test” that reveals whether a father has a relaxed approach to raise children instead of focusing on the “skills construction and curriculum tone.”
Today.com pointed out that an unchanging summer is impractical For working parents. “Good Morning America” argued that such Boredom can be beneficial For this generation of supercharged children. The cut ran a Contra-argument To its original column that pointed out how the “screen management” can be at home, and Slate lamented the pressure that comes with planning “Summer Descalación”. In early July, Vox even questioned whether children are able to experience the “Deluste boredom” of a summer of the 90s.
Much of this discussion has been out of contact. From the thorny linguistic implications of the phrase “rot” to the ridiculous notion that all aspects of the raising of children must have merit (even, Ironically, do less), the point that most parents do not have the luxury of time for this level of analysis or for the “best practices” that such analysis could suggest. They simply feel the weight of the trial for not having that free capacity.
Nor should it go unnoticed that all these articles are written by women and quotes to women, which reflects a universal truth about the summer: mothers are surely more likely to be camp programmers and the caregivers of children who do not attend them because they are achieving 71% of planning, organization and programming within your home.
After I told those other mothers that this summer was “the best thing that has happened to me,” I immediately felt “Mom Culpa”. Not because I believe that the empty moment that my children fill the capture dragonflies in the backyard or move to their rooms to listen to audiobooks or hugging me in bed to watch an afternoon movie, all in the midst of constant disputes and struggles, it is more or less valuable than the time in the camp, but because my mental load is currently more luminous than the other mothers who were in the shower.
This, not if your children are in the camp or not, you feel closer to the real problem. Modern society is not built to support modern families. From agrarian -based schools to the lack of affordable child care options and support for parents who are careful, all parents are doing their best within a system that is failing them in each season. (When the viral load increases this winter, I am sure we will talk about Falling work parents care for sick children). Summer is just a three -month microcosm of the greatest problems facing fathers and, more specifically, mothers who are desperate for a decrease in their mental burden.
Ultimately, I think that is what all these articles are really discussing when you read between the lines. Returning to the idealized summer of the 90s of my childhood is less about what children are doing and more about what parents are not doing. Perhaps the only thing that each perspective has in common is that parents, especially mothers, are justified in wanting to cultivate and program their children less, because we all deserve a brief incursion into the apparently endless summers of our childhood before this summer, like all summers, it ends.
Sarah Hunter Simanson is an independent mother, teacher and writer in Memphis.
