Saying Goodbye to America’s Broken Summer Camp System
Our summer 2025 plan.
Thanks so much for your interest in other ways to manage summer other than expensive day camps! If you are new to me and my work, I’m a journalist and mom of three working on a book about community building and running the How to Find Your People Club here on Substack. (Join us!) I’ve spent years researching and reporting on social, economic, and policy issues impacting families and looking into America’s broken summer care system. When you become a member of my newsletter, you support me so I can support my family. Due to the high interest in this particular topic and in order to protect my family’s privacy a bit, I’m paywalling this post. I’m linking to several other non-paywalled posts about summer in America below. Enjoy!
On October 3rd, 2024, I received an email from a wonderful (and quite expensive) local summer camp announcing that registration would begin at 9 am on November 15th, 2024 for the 2025 summer season. Every year since I’ve had a camp-aged child, these emails have filled me with resigned dread. Time to dig up the spreadsheet. Time to start budgeting for deposits. Time to set calendar reminders so I can compete with my friends and neighbors for precious summer care slots. Time to activate all my type A tendencies so we can spend a lot of money for the privilege of going to work while school is out. Time to spend hours on the computer filling out repetitive camp forms. I have nothing against summer camp; my beef is with how expensive, competitive, and logistically challenging it’s become in the US.
But this year, when I saw the email, instead of feeling dread, I felt unbridled joy. Why? Because we aren’t signing up. Our summer is planned, and our family is embarking on an opt-out adventure. This may be risky, and it may prove way harder than following a traditional route, but we’re taking a chance on it anyway.
