Hi, working mom here. Can I please get back to a summer without camps to juggle for my kids?
This First Person column is written by Molly Morse, who lives near Ottawa. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
It was early March and there was still tons of snow on the ground. Some of the kids’ local summer camps had been hounding me over email for the past month to “register now because spots are filling up quickly!”
I was overcome with dread knowing that we would soon be hit with the double whammy of owing money on our taxes and paying for day camp for our children.
That would set my husband and me back about $350 per week per child, not including before and aftercare.
Plus, there’s the special gear the kids needed (a life-jacket and water shoes for my son’s sailing camp and new riding boots for my daughter’s horseriding camp). We have stable jobs, but with the skyrocketing cost of living, we just don’t have the cash flow to afford camp so we lean on the credit card and line of credit.
Fast forward to July and my husband was away in the N.W.T. doing field work as a research scientist for six weeks.
I woke up at 6.30 a.m. and by the time I dropped off my eldest daughter at her job at the local grocery store and the other two kids at different day camps, I rolled into the office an hour late. I then had to leave an hour early to do the pickup, which meant I missed out on two hours of work that day. I would either have to make up the time when I wasn’t so exhausted from all of this running around or take it from my vacation bank. Fortunately, I have a very understanding manager and flexible work hours.
Isn’t summer in Canada supposed to be a time for rest and relaxation?
Yet, as a working mother of three children, I find it to be one of the most stressful seasons of the year. Gone seem to be the days of kids being given free range, riding their bicycles and catching frogs in nearby ponds, and where their only rule was to be home for dinner.
That was what my childhood summers were like. I grew up in the 1980s in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. I was lucky enough to usually have at least one parent home and got to experience sleeping in and lazy summer days. On the rare occasion that I went to summer camp, it felt like a privilege.
Things feel different now. Both my husband and I have jobs, and I split my time between working in the office and working from home.
My children don’t expect us to pay for these camp experiences. In fact, they’d rather stay at home and spend the entire day on the screens if they could get away with it.
But I see the camps as a type of engaging and more meaningful summer while we are working, especially when they were younger. Now that they’re older, they could be left alone except the younger ones don’t always get along. My nine-year-old daughter doesn’t view the 13-year-old son as an authority figure, so we continue to send the younger two to camps so that I have peace of mind (and peace and quiet) and can actually get work done.
I need a complex spreadsheet to keep track of all of my kids’ day camp dates, locations, packing lists and start and end times. The same goes for staying on top of my 16-year-old daughter’s work and social schedule since she still relies on me for rides.
It makes me wish I had more extended family around to support us with the child care — and I can’t even imagine what it’s like for single parents. I get a taste of the challenges of solo parenting every summer when my husband goes up north for fieldwork. Luckily, as the kids get older, they are able to help me out a bit more, but not without some protest.
Let me be perfectly clear, I am not looking for sympathy. These are all choices that we have made as a couple — the three kids, the living far away from family and the jobs. I only write this essay to work through some of my big feelings. However, I think other parents may be able to relate to my summer stress.
We try to balance camps with family vacation time, which is hard to afford when you’re also paying for camps and “Nanny and Grampy Camp.” The latter involves taking the kids to Nova Scotia and leaving them with my in-laws for a couple of weeks.
With our family spread across the country, it’s not a question of dropping the kids off with grandparents just down the road for a few hours anymore. Just like registering for summer camps, it requires months of planning and great expense, including keeping track of how many reward points we’ve accumulated on the credit card to pay for the kids’ flights there and back.
However, my in-laws have been gracious hosts and will take any time they can get knowing that it won’t be too long before all their grandchildren will be too busy with friends and jobs to want to spend any time with them.
As much as I would like to do away with summer break and camps, teachers and kids both need a break from school and I don’t have any viable solutions to offer. I have tried keeping my kids home while I work but that just triggers my PTSD from the COVID lockdowns.
Despite all my gripes, kudos go out to the teachers who work so hard during the school year to educate my children and keep them out of trouble. Also, a shout-out goes to the many summer camps in the area that offer my kids wonderful opportunities to learn new skills, meet new friends and save me from the constant sibling rivalry and screen time negotiations.
As the kids get older and start leaving the nest, perhaps I will look back on this time fondly, but right now, I feel like summer break is going to break me.
My next panic attack will come when I start seeing the back-to-school flyers advertising all the things that will stretch our bank account, but that’s a story for another day.
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