“Is it OK for your kids to ‘rot’ all summer?” That’s a question The New York Times asked recently. By rot, of course, they mean not go to summer camp or other intensive enrichment programs and just be bored at home instead.
After decades in which the price of camp has gone from a minor expense to something that will break the bank, it’s not hard to see why some parents are wondering if they can dial things back. According to the American Camp Association, camp providers increased prices by 23% from 2023 to 2024, which is in addition to a 25% increase in 2022. Astonishingly, the ACA reports, “Despite two years in a row of raised prices, purchase intent from parents did not change.” But surely something has to give.
For younger kids, of course, there is no choice. Working parents have to find some way to occupy kids over the summer and most parents can’t take the summer off. Even with a full summer of camp, many parents are shocked to find out there is a weeks-long gap between the end of camp and the beginning of school. But as kids get older, there is the question of whether they can occupy themselves for at least most of the day. And the answer is probably yes.
Some parents ask grandparents for help or work from home for a little while. Their kids get so much enrichment the rest of the year, one parent explained, that it’s OK for them to be a little less scheduled over the summer. Some middle- and upper-class parents can work from home with at least one eye on the kids.
But that’s not true for everyone. Indeed, there is a whole group of kids who should not be rotting over the summer because they are experiencing too much rot the rest of the year.
The truth of the matter is that there are two groups of kids in this country: the overparented and the underparented. The overparented are the ones whose parents have scheduled every minute of their days with a view to getting them into a good college and getting them into a decent career. Their efforts are not always successful, and often, they are having the opposite of the intended effect by reducing their children’s freedom and independence.
The underparented are often living in homes with single parents. In an effort to keep them out of trouble from the neighborhood or the other kids around, some parents are letting their kids spend all their time on screens. Others are dealing with substance abuse or mental illness issues that prevent them from paying much attention to their kids at all.
Unlike their peers who don’t have enough independence, these underparented kids are being forced to grow up too fast.
They are worried about whether their parent will wake up the next morning, or whether a strange man will be in their home. They will have to get themselves to school or wonder about whether their mother has remembered to buy groceries or go to work. No one tells them to go to bed or do their homework.
These divides cross racial and geographical lines. There are underparented children in the South Bronx and in Appalachia, and there are overparented kids who are white and Hispanic and Black and Asian.
Summer is the time when these divides are most stark. They are when parents make (or don’t make) choices about what their children need. For the overparented, a break from schoolwork and other kinds of enrichment is much needed (as long as it is not simply replaced by screen time). These are kids who need to be outside, need to get real jobs, go hang out with friends and play in some unorganized fashion.
For the underparented, though, summer is a time when they need even more supervision. They may need summer school to catch up. (This is one reason why high-performing charter schools often have a school year that extends into July and restarts again in August.) These children need adults who will keep them out of trouble and the kind of structure that we don’t often associate with the warmer months.
When it comes to the problems of children today, it is easy to paint with a broad brush. And it is true there are troubling trends in parenting kids across the socioeconomic spectrum. But the gaps between different groups of kids are not just those created by material circumstances. Often they are created by parents themselves.