The real reason parents send kids to summer “camp”
Posted on 06/26/2009 01:19 pm by kagranju
Newsweek has a story online today explaining how the economic downturn means fewer parents can afford summer camps. The story takes the position that this is a good thing, as it allows children more “free play” during the summer months.
Clueless, clueless, clueless.
Except for within a certain highly rarified economic strata, “summer camp” is just a more attractive way of saying “program for working mothers scrambling to patch together some sort of summertime childcare for their elementary-school-aged kids.”
And if parents can’t afford summer camps, they will be looking for some other kind of cheaper childcare. The inability to pay for childcare doesn’t mean children will have some sort of more idyllic summertime experience; it means that kids will be more likely to sit on a couch watching movies all afternoon at the home of the stay-at-home neighbor that their working mom is paying (less than camp fees) to babysit while she’s at her job.
The gazillions of specialty themed summer camps that now exist in every locale in the country serve an important purpose in the messy, American childcare ecosystem, but they aren’t really “camps” in the sense that one thinks of the iconic month canoeing on a lake in Maine with preppy cabin-mates from all over the country.
The summer programs in which many of us enroll our children aren’t really “camp,” any more than the “schools” that exist for children three and under are really schools. In both cases, they are childcare, plain and simple. And we need more good, affordable childcare options in this country, no matter what we choose to call it.
Parents being unable to afford childcare is not a good thing, no matter how Newsweek tries to spin it.
06/26/2009 at 1:41 pm
Katie, When I was able to send my children to Zoo Camp or whatever, it was absolutely NOT childcare. It was not an entire summer of scheduled activities either. It was a one week break from hanging around the neighborhood all day, every day. It was learning and trying something new. It was something the children loved. I loved them being able to do it. I did not love that the children’s favorite week of the summer was the one that started with me dragging a sleeping toddler out of the house at the crack of dawn to drive one child to zoo camp. This was followed by a rush across town to drop another child at art camp. Next was the world’s quickest lunch for the toddler and then back to the zoo to pick-up the happy child who just experienced a giraffe eating out of her hand. After that, I immediately raced back to pick up the art camper who was learning about printmaking. Again, this was not childcare.
06/26/2009 at 1:45 pm
Cathy – Absolutely, I do understand that some stay at home parents send their kids to a week of day camp in the summer just so their children can have a fun experience. I did, back when I was a SAHM. But for working moms, these summer camps are a critical part of the childcare patchwork quilt. If we are unable to afford them, we are screwed.
And I know quite a few working moms who are in that position this summer. Husband is out of work or they took a pay cut or furlough (unpaid vacation) in exchange for keeping a job, and now they are having a hard time paying for summer camps, and a really hard time figuring out what to do instead.
-KAG
-Katie
06/27/2009 at 9:22 am
In my area the township offers a very inexpensive ($300.00 for a month in the Summer) recreational camp starting immediately after the school year ends.If your town doesn’t have a Rec Camp program perhaps you and a group of parents could attend a city council meeting and suggest they implement one. I’m sure there are many successful program’s they could model.
06/27/2009 at 3:52 pm
Why limit this to “working moms”? Isn’t the situation the same when both parents work?
06/27/2009 at 8:53 pm
I think the YMCA has a ‘camp’ like the one Diane mentioned but unfortunately the city does not (and I doubt would ever since it would cost money). I am *trying* to work out every day and so have been around the Y a lot and it seems exactly that–inexpensive daycare for working parents during the summer (and I know they also have scholarships).
06/27/2009 at 9:26 pm
Knoxville has a City Parks and Recreation program that is really, really inexpensive–$20 per child. I think it’s 9-3, maybe, all summer long, if I recall correctly. It’s too late for this summer–registration ended in May. It’s for kids aged 6-12, and it takes place at rec centers throughout the city.
06/28/2009 at 12:44 pm
Phoenix has literally hundreds of summer camp options, but most of them are noon to 3 pm, or 10 to 4 on M, W, F, or some other subset of a normal workday. Only a small percentage of them are doable if the parent works a normal dayshift.
For instance, something like the Knoxville program Leslie mentioned, wouldn’t be possible for me at all, unless they also offer before- and after-care (for an additional fee, of course). I wouldn’t be able to get her there for 9 (have to be at work already) or pick her up at 3.