Losing at Summer Childcare Bingo
I quit.
Today I’m officially “off” from the newsletter, but I’ve reached a personal boiling point about the absurdity of America’s summers for families and I have to share a little rant with you all.
Like many families I know, I have a spreadsheet about summer camp schedules which is then crossposted into a Google calendar. All the instructions for each camp are plucked out of emails by me, added to the calendar, and cross-checked with drop-off and pickup times. Since I have three kids, one way I sought to make this logistical nightmare simpler was to limit the number of different camps and put all the kids together whenever possible, which isn’t easy with 4-year-olds and a rising 4th grader, because most camps don’t cover that range of ages.
So a few weeks ago I checked in with the twins’ camp director about 4th of July week schedule, as they offered only one six-week block of camp back in November, not individual week signups. She confirmed they were off Thursday for the holiday, but back open Friday. Monday, July 1st rolls around, and my husband Travis takes the twins to camp, sunscreened up and backpacks packed, and then calls me from the playground. “No one is here, except a few other confused parents. I think they are closed.” I quickly call the main office and they confirmed that they are closed for the entire week offering only, “we are so sorry that wasn’t communicated well.” When the director told me they were open, she had actually told me about their OTHER camp’s location’s planned schedule.
In the weeks leading up to July 1, there were no reminders about the closure, no signs on the whiteboard, no messages in the app that they primarily use to spam us with pictures, and no “we’ll see you in a week!” at pickup. The only written notice I could find about this closure with a list of dates from BACK IN NOVEMBER. A childcare scramble ensued. And something just broke in me. I will not play this ridiculous, impossible-to-win game of spending thousands and thousands of dollars on day camps. Consider this my resignation letter. While I will continue to advocate for more community-based solutions to this problem, my personal act of protest is the withdrawal of my money and my participation in this expensive, unfair, logistical nightmare Hunger Games that so many of us have been sucked into because we deign to have jobs from June to August. My husband and I are already talking about a radical rethink of how we spend summers and are actively discussing a different path forward for our family for 2025. Stay tuned.
An antidote to my rage is knowing I’m not alone and there are people out there working to make this situation better for all families. I love this “Bingo” game paired with a call to action from MomsRising to contact your representative about making summer care more available and affordable for everyone.
Solidarity with everyone losing at bingo while trying to get through the next 6 to 10 weeks.
If you are new to the Double Shift, feel free to catch up on my extensive reporting on summer camp woes.
REMINDER! In August I’ll be hosting an open-to-all virtual Double Shift book discussion about the fantastic new book, Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives. I interviewed one of the authors, Emily Amick, and this book is something the Double Shift community needs in our lives. Stay tuned for that discussion with Emily later this month and details about the book club. In the meantime, order your copy! It’s an easy, breezy, yet important read.
Just…holy shit. I feel you. One kid is still in daycare and that is the regular schedule (aside from holiday closures and a week closure for teacher vacations—we are lucky to have my parents as a backup because of course it’s not the same week that *we* are on vacation), but the rising first grader is in a different camp for a lot of weeks. I have a similar spreadsheet to yours and a lot of extra little details in my head.
In some ways camp feels like MORE work than school. I don’t have to sunscreen up my kid or make lunch for them every day or pack nine thousand snacks. Also the drop off time is usually earlier, which is sometimes fine and sometimes not. (Earlier pickup times for at least two of our camps.) And then my kid will often whine that she doesn’t want to go and that she would rather have a babysitter (but not my parents, our backup).
I do know that my mom dealt with some of this when I was growing up in the late 80s/early 90s. And even my aunt had to go in person at 6:00 am on a morning in February to try to get a spot for my younger cousin as late as ten years ago. We got one week at that same camp this year but I only had to sign up online—still at 6:00 am, and I only got the week of July 4th (thankfully they were open all week).
Aside from actual funded/subsidized, available childcare for the summer, I would like to see some serious respect paid to mothers (it is nearly always mothers!!!) for the mental gymnastics and calculus-level equations we work through in order to make sure that our kids have places to be in the summer. Just one of many tasks that is ignored and dismissed when it is brought up, but it’s a big one.
GAHHHHH. I am so curious to follow your process for figuring out summer 2025 -- I have been thinking hard the past two weeks about whether a summer sabbatical could make sense for my business so we could take a totally different approach to summer childcare. The split focus time is killer and sucks a lot of joy out of what is actually my favorite season. Obviously speaking with a lot of privilege here, but could it be worth the income hit to just take a proper, European-style 4-6 weeks off and then come back actually/hopefully recharged. (NOT A SYSTEMIC SOLUTION TO BE CLEAR.)