Philadelphia is talking about doing year round school for its public schools. It will be interesting to see how it goes. There is such a huge "down the shore" culture, I can see lots of teachers and families arguing that they can't spend almost three months at the beach, and the rest of us like the relief of less people in the city in the summer. Every couple of years, the school district starts school the week BEFORE Labor Day and this is a mess. Most of the schools don't have AC, so it's too hot, and so many families are down the shore until the evening of Labor Day, so kids either miss the first week or people feel they lose out on their shore house investment. The pilot program for year round school starts in 2025, right when my son starts kindergarten. I wouldn't mind if his school is part of the program!
Let Grow recently posted how two American moms created a neighborhood summer camp and recruited the older kids to be counselors: https://letgrow.org/start-a-camp/
I love this, thanks for sharing! Our neighborhood circle of friends is mostly younger children but I think we would be interested in this for later years. We created a weekly and then monthly supper club last summer to give each other a break from cooking and have meaningful community interaction. So great to see we are not alone in changing the culture!
We have one friend that sort of took the lead in organizing via group text and being flexible - letting the host pick the date, what is being served, etc. We currently have six families that we rotate through (varying income levels and space to host). During the summer months we tried every week and then during the school year switched to monthly. For my turn hosting I made tacos one time and another time BLTs with salad. We've done a few and combined them with a Christmas celebration for the kids to do a secret santa and another to celebrate a birthday. This is one of my first substack posts but a quick summary from last summer :-)
The lack of community and family connections helping parents in the U.S. is so painful to watch. In India, summers involved spending weeks in Grandparents’ and relatives ( aunts , uncles ) houses in different cities with cousins. Unsupervised play is often the norm. We also got to visit the beach, zoos, planetariums and museums to experience the new cities. Relatives ( siblings of parents, two sets of grandparents) took turns in hosting the kids / cousins for weeks so no one set of parents got stuck with managing a bunch of kids and organizing activities for them for more than a couple of weeks.
I love this vision of extended family bonding. Also in my experience of living in India for seven months many many people who are middle-class and above also have domestic help so kids aren’t left completely alone if some of the parents are working..
It is true that most households have domestic help who can keep an eye on the children. They’re not expected to plan and organize activities to keep the children engaged( like visiting the zoo or going to a movie theater ). It’s mostly the family / extended family members who did that.
Well, I am INSANELY jealous. And also really tired—what does it take to get people to wake up and see how beneficial these programs are for the collective?
It's definitely going to be a long game. may if/when we get more public support for zero-5 (which is where the most advocacy is in the childcare space right now) that might push the culture to think about more support during the summer. and cool to hear about from the other commenter that NYC is trying something bold.
Seems like this, like so as many other care related things in the U.S., falls into the moms will handle it category. So many summer camps, if you can even get a spot, don’t even cover the full day. It’s the same problem with the school day and the lack of available affordable afterschool care. Why? Because there is an assumption that a parent, probably mom, will just be there, nevermind that most moms work outside the home.
I’m an American living in Portugal and the whole thing seems much more relaxed here. More affordable options and the default seems to be full day, plus many families take summer vacations. It’s not uncommon in my neighborhood to see a sign posted on a local business or restaurant door that they are closed and on holiday for 2,3, or 4 weeks.
Thank you for this post. It is so interesting to read how other countries handle summer breaks. For many years I have thought that we in the U.S. should be following the lead of other nations who have shorter breaks and offer year-round education. Sadly, like any changes, I think Americans would be slow to adopt "losing" their three-month summer breaks to which they have become so accustomed.
I am definitely jealous of the cultures who have the shorter summer breaks and it's normal for the whole family to take several weeks away together. One of my part-time contractors in Sweden spends the entire month of July at their summer house completely off the grid with her family. I also love the idea of summer camps being great first jobs for teenagers, which we do see some of that at the YMCA camps we've done in the past, but for it to be a more official city run program and cultural expectation would be great.
Not having walkable communities and the culture of supervision are such detractors here in the USA. I wish my kids could wander around and explore our town but it isn’t possible.
Thanks, this is all fascinating and frustrating! The differences in public acceptance for un/under-supervised kids in public spaces is a striking difference between the USA and many of the countries highlighted, along with paid vacation leave. I'm in NYC and the city's Summer Rising program, which started the first or second pandemic summer if I recall, and offers free summer camp based out of neighborhood public schools has been huge help to parents.
Honestly, this doesn't really sound *that* different from the US, except that summer break tends to be shorter. It sounds like in many countries, there's a patchwork of public and private summer camps, plus some kids staying home or being cared for by relatives. Yes, many kids in the States go to crazy expensive private/sleepaway camps, but some kids also go to cheap city/YMCA camps.
i think a key difference is that no other country has ALL of the factors that make summer in the US difficult. If you take away just one or two, like say, shorter summers or less supervision culture, that would make a meaningful difference in US parents' lives.
As a reader who lives right next door to you in Morrisville, NC - I have put in a plug for year round schools in Wake County (which I know work a bit differently from Durham's) - my kids are in year round (WCPSS's Track 4, which is the closest to a "normal" schedule) and I really love how much easier I find it to work around my work schedule! Camps on trackouts not in the summer can be booked on as short notice as a week or two ahead of time and then for the summer I am able to get away with just a week or two of camp and then we use the other weeks for travel and we are lucky to also have a lot of local family so the grandparents and aunts/uncles who stay home also take days with my kiddos. I know plenty of folks don't love the year round system but I really think it helps overcome this long summer issue! (plus it's so hot in NC in the summer I don't hate that my kids are in school in August for the hottest parts of the day!) [I will say I'm totally bookmarking the Field School in Croatia though - what an absolute dream summer that would be!]
i am a big fan of year round school (in theory, i haven't personally experienced it) Durham has a few options for it, but sadly not the school across the street from our house. Doesn't the field school sound MAGICAL???
I live in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a six year old who is about to finish his first year at primary school. He has additional support needs, meaning that he needs one-to-one support at holiday clubs.
Holiday care is an issue here, too, especially if your child has additional support needs. Our summer holiday isn't as long (about six weeks); but there are thirteen full weeks of school holiday per year, plus several bank holidays and teacher training days at other times. We do get some paid leave, but few jobs would offer that much, so covering all the holidays is a struggle, particularly if there is only one parent.
Several schools, but not all, offer holiday clubs (run by third-party organisations on their premises). At my son's school, this costs about 140 pounds (around 178 dollars) per week. Some families can get some of this money back in tax credits. However, the holiday clubs have limited places available, so people also use other, private holiday clubs, which are more expensive.
For children who need one-to-one support, like my son, our Council (local authority) runs "holiday hubs". We're relatively lucky in having these at all in Edinburgh. However, you can get a maximum of four weeks per year (I got three this year), and they run 9 - 3 for four days per week, often a long way from where you live. For the other nine or more weeks of holiday per year, plus all the extra days off, you're on your own. It effectively makes it very hard for parents of children with additional support needs, particularly single parents, to work full-time. I work freelance, and am very privileged in having parents who can help me out financially. Many parents don't have this, and parents of disabled children are more likely to be living in poverty, because of these barriers to working among other factors.
I am glad that Scotland has at least a few weeks of support for kids who have special needs, but it is clearly not close to enough. I think families In this position, really feel the social policy failures around out of school time very acutely
Toronto mom here. I think I spent a good $5k (Canadian) on day camps for my 5 1/2 year old since some of them are sports camps. And that’s not even the entire summer. We are looking at 6 weeks. 🤦♀️
And sign-up isn't necessarily in February. Some open in November or December! One of the camps my son is in opened registration at noon and I was just a few getting on late. Guess what happened? HALF of the camps were already FULL! I wanted him to try multi-sport before basketball, but ended up waitlisting him for multi-sport one week and putting him in basketball instead. The pricier camps often include pool time. I don't want to know how much things will cost by the time he's old enough for sleep away.
I'm actually interested to know how summers vary regionally, both in Canada AND the US.
Philadelphia is talking about doing year round school for its public schools. It will be interesting to see how it goes. There is such a huge "down the shore" culture, I can see lots of teachers and families arguing that they can't spend almost three months at the beach, and the rest of us like the relief of less people in the city in the summer. Every couple of years, the school district starts school the week BEFORE Labor Day and this is a mess. Most of the schools don't have AC, so it's too hot, and so many families are down the shore until the evening of Labor Day, so kids either miss the first week or people feel they lose out on their shore house investment. The pilot program for year round school starts in 2025, right when my son starts kindergarten. I wouldn't mind if his school is part of the program!
Let Grow recently posted how two American moms created a neighborhood summer camp and recruited the older kids to be counselors: https://letgrow.org/start-a-camp/
I love this, thanks for sharing! Our neighborhood circle of friends is mostly younger children but I think we would be interested in this for later years. We created a weekly and then monthly supper club last summer to give each other a break from cooking and have meaningful community interaction. So great to see we are not alone in changing the culture!
Love this sharing the load and building community!
I really like the supper club idea! Just curious how many people are involved and how your organized it?
We have one friend that sort of took the lead in organizing via group text and being flexible - letting the host pick the date, what is being served, etc. We currently have six families that we rotate through (varying income levels and space to host). During the summer months we tried every week and then during the school year switched to monthly. For my turn hosting I made tacos one time and another time BLTs with salad. We've done a few and combined them with a Christmas celebration for the kids to do a secret santa and another to celebrate a birthday. This is one of my first substack posts but a quick summary from last summer :-)
https://ljhealthcoaching.substack.com/p/supper-club
The lack of community and family connections helping parents in the U.S. is so painful to watch. In India, summers involved spending weeks in Grandparents’ and relatives ( aunts , uncles ) houses in different cities with cousins. Unsupervised play is often the norm. We also got to visit the beach, zoos, planetariums and museums to experience the new cities. Relatives ( siblings of parents, two sets of grandparents) took turns in hosting the kids / cousins for weeks so no one set of parents got stuck with managing a bunch of kids and organizing activities for them for more than a couple of weeks.
I love this vision of extended family bonding. Also in my experience of living in India for seven months many many people who are middle-class and above also have domestic help so kids aren’t left completely alone if some of the parents are working..
It is true that most households have domestic help who can keep an eye on the children. They’re not expected to plan and organize activities to keep the children engaged( like visiting the zoo or going to a movie theater ). It’s mostly the family / extended family members who did that.
Well, I am INSANELY jealous. And also really tired—what does it take to get people to wake up and see how beneficial these programs are for the collective?
It's definitely going to be a long game. may if/when we get more public support for zero-5 (which is where the most advocacy is in the childcare space right now) that might push the culture to think about more support during the summer. and cool to hear about from the other commenter that NYC is trying something bold.
I think if we could also push the work culture to the 32-hour work week it would make things easier with childcare. Always appreciate your work!
Seems like this, like so as many other care related things in the U.S., falls into the moms will handle it category. So many summer camps, if you can even get a spot, don’t even cover the full day. It’s the same problem with the school day and the lack of available affordable afterschool care. Why? Because there is an assumption that a parent, probably mom, will just be there, nevermind that most moms work outside the home.
I’m an American living in Portugal and the whole thing seems much more relaxed here. More affordable options and the default seems to be full day, plus many families take summer vacations. It’s not uncommon in my neighborhood to see a sign posted on a local business or restaurant door that they are closed and on holiday for 2,3, or 4 weeks.
Portugal seems like it really has summer figured out!
Thank you for this post. It is so interesting to read how other countries handle summer breaks. For many years I have thought that we in the U.S. should be following the lead of other nations who have shorter breaks and offer year-round education. Sadly, like any changes, I think Americans would be slow to adopt "losing" their three-month summer breaks to which they have become so accustomed.
I am definitely jealous of the cultures who have the shorter summer breaks and it's normal for the whole family to take several weeks away together. One of my part-time contractors in Sweden spends the entire month of July at their summer house completely off the grid with her family. I also love the idea of summer camps being great first jobs for teenagers, which we do see some of that at the YMCA camps we've done in the past, but for it to be a more official city run program and cultural expectation would be great.
It makes so much sense to have a city run program for this it solves so many needs
Not having walkable communities and the culture of supervision are such detractors here in the USA. I wish my kids could wander around and explore our town but it isn’t possible.
So frustrating
Thanks, this is all fascinating and frustrating! The differences in public acceptance for un/under-supervised kids in public spaces is a striking difference between the USA and many of the countries highlighted, along with paid vacation leave. I'm in NYC and the city's Summer Rising program, which started the first or second pandemic summer if I recall, and offers free summer camp based out of neighborhood public schools has been huge help to parents.
Wow, i haven't heard of that program and I so wish that was more widespread!!
The Summer Rising program has sooo much demand. It would be great to see it get more funding so that it can expand.
Honestly, this doesn't really sound *that* different from the US, except that summer break tends to be shorter. It sounds like in many countries, there's a patchwork of public and private summer camps, plus some kids staying home or being cared for by relatives. Yes, many kids in the States go to crazy expensive private/sleepaway camps, but some kids also go to cheap city/YMCA camps.
i think a key difference is that no other country has ALL of the factors that make summer in the US difficult. If you take away just one or two, like say, shorter summers or less supervision culture, that would make a meaningful difference in US parents' lives.
As a reader who lives right next door to you in Morrisville, NC - I have put in a plug for year round schools in Wake County (which I know work a bit differently from Durham's) - my kids are in year round (WCPSS's Track 4, which is the closest to a "normal" schedule) and I really love how much easier I find it to work around my work schedule! Camps on trackouts not in the summer can be booked on as short notice as a week or two ahead of time and then for the summer I am able to get away with just a week or two of camp and then we use the other weeks for travel and we are lucky to also have a lot of local family so the grandparents and aunts/uncles who stay home also take days with my kiddos. I know plenty of folks don't love the year round system but I really think it helps overcome this long summer issue! (plus it's so hot in NC in the summer I don't hate that my kids are in school in August for the hottest parts of the day!) [I will say I'm totally bookmarking the Field School in Croatia though - what an absolute dream summer that would be!]
i am a big fan of year round school (in theory, i haven't personally experienced it) Durham has a few options for it, but sadly not the school across the street from our house. Doesn't the field school sound MAGICAL???
If you want to learn more about the Field school of Hvar, I recently interviewed Carolyn for a blog. It does sound amazing! https://blog.planmykids.com/resources/f/croatian-summer-camp-blends-cultural-immersion-with-family-travel
OMG this is literally Camp BSC from the Babysitters Club but adult supervised
I live in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a six year old who is about to finish his first year at primary school. He has additional support needs, meaning that he needs one-to-one support at holiday clubs.
Holiday care is an issue here, too, especially if your child has additional support needs. Our summer holiday isn't as long (about six weeks); but there are thirteen full weeks of school holiday per year, plus several bank holidays and teacher training days at other times. We do get some paid leave, but few jobs would offer that much, so covering all the holidays is a struggle, particularly if there is only one parent.
Several schools, but not all, offer holiday clubs (run by third-party organisations on their premises). At my son's school, this costs about 140 pounds (around 178 dollars) per week. Some families can get some of this money back in tax credits. However, the holiday clubs have limited places available, so people also use other, private holiday clubs, which are more expensive.
For children who need one-to-one support, like my son, our Council (local authority) runs "holiday hubs". We're relatively lucky in having these at all in Edinburgh. However, you can get a maximum of four weeks per year (I got three this year), and they run 9 - 3 for four days per week, often a long way from where you live. For the other nine or more weeks of holiday per year, plus all the extra days off, you're on your own. It effectively makes it very hard for parents of children with additional support needs, particularly single parents, to work full-time. I work freelance, and am very privileged in having parents who can help me out financially. Many parents don't have this, and parents of disabled children are more likely to be living in poverty, because of these barriers to working among other factors.
I am glad that Scotland has at least a few weeks of support for kids who have special needs, but it is clearly not close to enough. I think families In this position, really feel the social policy failures around out of school time very acutely
Toronto mom here. I think I spent a good $5k (Canadian) on day camps for my 5 1/2 year old since some of them are sports camps. And that’s not even the entire summer. We are looking at 6 weeks. 🤦♀️
ugh. that is expensive!!!
And sign-up isn't necessarily in February. Some open in November or December! One of the camps my son is in opened registration at noon and I was just a few getting on late. Guess what happened? HALF of the camps were already FULL! I wanted him to try multi-sport before basketball, but ended up waitlisting him for multi-sport one week and putting him in basketball instead. The pricier camps often include pool time. I don't want to know how much things will cost by the time he's old enough for sleep away.
I'm actually interested to know how summers vary regionally, both in Canada AND the US.
SO JEALOUS. And whoa, those Croatian teens are living it up!
Maybe too much fun 😲
This was so interesting!! I'm in Iceland right now on vacation and we are marveling at all the kids running around in packs on their own.
This research made me want to take my kids to Iceland for the summer
Except you will pay $300 a day for their food 🤣