Notes on Summer Mental Load

I am so sorry it is already time to talk about camp.

A few weeks ago, I asked for your thoughts on what the Tuesday newsletter should be (now that the “big essay” usually runs on Fridays). 68 percent of you voted for a mix of short personal essays, outfit reports, thread prompts, and link roundups (which are sometimes scattershot and sometimes a theme like my favorite makeup or an anti-diet guide to the flu). So that’s the game plan for now and today is half essay, half thread prompt, you are welcome!

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I booked my first three weeks of summer camp (for one child!) two weeks ago. It was a registration I didn’t even know about until a mom friend texted the heads up, and I then dropped everything I was doing to get it done. Yes, I was sweaty palmed, racing through registration forms, probably misspelling my child’s name, in order to secure a summer camp on JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH. And let me tell you, I was damn lucky to get the very last spot open in one of the weeks I wanted.

This entire experience always sounds perfectly absurd to any child-free friend who has to witness it or hear the anecdote later. It’s also mind-boggling to people who parent in countries with any sort of publicly-funded childcare structure. But every working parent—especially every mom—in America has been here, or is currently right here, with me.

Our academic school year revolves around a 10- to 12-week summer break, but parents’ work schedules almost never do. Our lack of investment in childcare means that there is no centralized system, or even so much as a school district-specific database where we could easily search for camp availability near us. Virtually no camp covers the entire summer from last day to first day of school, meaning parents must patchwork together care. This is maddening from a planning perspective, and does not a relaxing summer make: Routines change every other week, and swapping camps means throwing kids into new peer groups and places all summer long, which can be a lot—especially for anxious, introverted, or neurodivergent kiddos.

And every camp follows their own quixotic whims: Will they schedule by the week or require you to commit to a month? Will their day run a “full” 9am to 3pm, or just a casual 10am to noon? (Who is signing up for those morning camps?? Even if you don’t need the childcare, stop rewarding this bad behavior!) Did registration start in September and you’re already late, or will they not even release program information until March or April, thereby holding your entire summer calendar hostage because they are, of course, the one camp your kid really wants to attend?

Layered into all of this, of course, is quite a lot of classism and performative parenting. The “classic” American summer of staying home to watch too much TV except when your mom took you to the town pool or made you go fend for yourself outside no longer feels like a responsible or accessible parenting decision. (And it often isn’t! My own childhood summers never looked like that, not because we were so wealthy, but because I had two full-time working parents at a time when that was much less common.) Upper middle class parents have also bought into the expectation that summer should “enrich” our kids. My own 6th grader told me that she wanted to do something that will “look good on college applications” this summer because that’s what her friends are somehow already talking about. But it’s a chicken and egg question whether we gravitate towards “impressive” summer activities because we’ve been conditioned to think kids need to rack up those achievements, or because our privatized summer camp system doesn’t really offer us anything else.

For more on the misogyny of summer camp, please read Melinda Wenner Moyer, Sara Petersen, and above all, Katherine Goldstein, who has brilliantly dissected the summer childcare conundrum from so many angles. (See: It’s Richard Nixon’s fault! And: How other countries handle summer.) Katherine recently wrote about her family’s decision to opt out of the system altogether. They are using the money they would have spent on 10 weeks of camp for three kids, and putting it towards a mix of summer babysitting and five weeks of living in Costa Rica. The fact that American summer camp costs as much as moving to Costa Rica really tells you everything you need to know about our crumbling nation.

Katherine is quick to emphasize that she’s found a personal solution to a systemic problem when what we really need is structural change. But I still find her outside-the-box thinking on this topic inspiring. Five weeks in Costa Rica wouldn’t work for my two-household family (I’d also miss my summer garden too much!!). But as our kids get older, and increasingly camp-averse, I do find myself trying to get creative with the whole problem. Or at least, more willing to interrogate how bad a summer of endless screen time would actually be?

And whenever I talk about summer, I make a point to reshare this bit of wisdom:

v_solesmith

A post shared by @v_solesmith

I don’t have a larger argument or a neat wrap-up for this conversation; I’m not even sure this is really a Burnt Toast story! It’s just what is on my mind now that the “summer camp panic” part of my brain has been activated.

But I’d love to hear how you think about summer? (Yes in fucking February!!)

Tell us where you are with your own summer planning. Are you also the camp mental load parent in your kids’ life? Or are you kid-free, and just watching aghast, as we panic over registration wait lists and non-refundable deposits? All (respectful and supportive!) perspectives welcome.