I blame the internet for the spreading of fake stories of idyllic summers. I did a Camp Mom last year when my husband did an intensive work thing. We did a lot of cool shit but I also blew up at everyone a lot for not appreciating my toiling. Anyway Big Summer is the problem, not you.
I love this writing and want to see it in a national publication so that other people — non-writers, non-mothers — might read it and consider our weird and heartbreaking dichotomy of "work." ALSO: I'm excited for you to start morning pages!
You know, I considered pitching a version of this (less rambling, w/research), and decided I'd make more money posting it here. Nowadays, journalism pays so little and Substack is more lucrative--but it also means there is less reach. Ay!
And we shall see if the Morning Pages happen...but I'd love to try.
Wow, Edan. Thank you for writing this--and for always sharing the details that make solidarity amongst mothers possible. We have 4 camp-free weeks over the 9-week summer. I'm not doing them all, but splitting them with my husband. We shall see how it goes. Here's something--it doesn't cost as much as camp, but I always find I end up spending a lot during "Camp Mommy" (which is what my kids call it). Hell, even today, I had to buy treats to get us (me?) through an extremely challenging day. Anyway, good luck, and please report back!
Patrick just had to spend all weekend with Mickey at home because Mickey got Hand Foot and Mouth--and now he is like, "THE EXPERIMENT WILL FAIL." Lol. I think not being able to leave to tire a kid out AND get a treat would make it intolerable. I also spend way too much on cookies and lemonade on our outings. Oh well!
I am looking forward to a similar summer here for us, although I wasn't quite as brave and simply cut the amount of camp we have in half, so just 5 weeks over the whole summer, and most of it is boring, generic day camp run by teenagers at a community center close enough for my almost 9 year to walk to/from on her own. When camp time came around IN JANUARY (seriously wtf) I just didn't feel like figuring it out. I didn't feel like paying for childcare anymore! I don't want our summer to be over scheduled like every other season of our lives. I am still planning to work, getting up early to get my hours in while my kiddo watches too much TV and then we'll have afternoons free. Here goes nothing!
It'll be great--I hope! I decided to not write (my novel) so that I wouldn't feel resentful that I didn't have more time to do it. We shall see how that feels. I def wish I could start over parenting and never let my kids get even a taste of the fancy camps!
Reading this while on vacation in Bulgaria where I am originally from. My dad was retelling a news article he had read, incredulously, about American families and how we don't save money. I then proceeded to do a version of your math on a literal napkin for him. He told me that daycare in Bulgaria (the second poorest country in the EU) is free.
For next year I am considering bringing my kid here for the whole summer. Even if I pay two return tickets to drop her off and pick her up, it would still be cheaper than keeping her in good camps all summer. America is out of control.
I agree--it's unsustainable. Our neighbors are from Winnipeg and they send their kids there for the summer, and with flights back and forth it's still cheaper!
I might bookmark this for next year when we're figuring out how to manage summers. My husband and I are both academics but he's on the administrative side and I'm faculty which means my summers open up considerably. At the same time. I do need to work since writing time is massively scarce during the school year. I don't want to consign my son to constant summer camp because I never liked being overbooked in the summer and I think there's something valuable about hitting that boredom point where you miss your friends and the academic routine. But I am APPREHENSIVE. Crossing my fingers that this divestment goes well.
My advice to you is seek out the free camps first--the summer schools, or the low budget park camps. (My friend sends her kids to a camp that is $50 week--in LA. Why didn't I know about this?!) Keep the expectations low for kids, and they won't know what they're missing. The bougie camps are not worth it. 4 or so weeks of that will give you the time you need to focus on your work! A win-win.
I’m a high school teacher and every May I daydream about how much writing I’ll get done over the summer…and then every June I remember I have kids…and then every September I get so frustrated at the lack of work done. Sigh.
This touches on so much about work and writing and parenting that I find compelling. Our CPA once calculated, unprompted, the cost/benefit of my working and us getting childcare. Needless to say, we got a new CPA! But nonetheless it has haunted me...
As someone who really appreciates the ways your novels capture parenthood, I’m selfishly excited to see the fruits of this experiment. You used “marinading,” I feel like there’s maybe a compost metaphor in there too? Or some super foodie fermentation technique. We also have spent money on fancy camp only to have our child tell us later it was miserable for them. I’m a mostly stay at home part time working mom and cobbling things together in the summer always makes me do the mental “is this indulgence/sacrifice for me or them” dance. I think it’s both/and sometimes and neither sometimes, like all good experiments.
Aww thank you, Elizabeth. This is definitely the goal with the summer. And my new book is about work and motherhood so it feels like a useful experiment from a creative perspective.
As a teacher, I assume I will join the Mommy Experiment as soon as my son starts kindergarten. I haven't thought of teaching as a particularly family friendly career (most times I'd say it's really not family friendly, especially compared to people with hybrid or remote jobs), but perhaps my perspective will change when I am able to stay home with him in the summer.
Oh yeah, the teacher life seems ideal for parenting--you have shorter hours (though a lot of grading, ugh), and summers off. So good! One of my sisters is a high school teacher and have never once sent her kids to camp.
Our work week is still 40 hours but our contract is 196 days. The issue is pay. I used to think nurses and teachers had similar pay grades, but that’s not the case anymore (RNs in our area make 80K in their first year, it took me 13 years to make that salary…). 🫠
As an employee, I’d rather have a shorter work week year round and get rid of the 8 week summer break, but that’s not popular among my colleagues.
This post is very similar to what I'm going through! I did bump my toddler up to 3 days a week in daycare (up from two, my husband is a firefighter so he's home for days at a time so full time daycare never made sense) but having my six year old home all the time has been rewarding and challenging. I quickly realized camps were not going to work because of price and duration (10-12 for two weeks?? In a city 25 min away?? No thanks). So I've embraced the "you might be bored deal with it" mentality I had to do as a kid when both my parents worked full time also. So far it has created massive messes but also has spurred creativity from my kiddo as I work a corporate job full time. I will say this change in schedule for summer means my writing is dusty and neglected.
Try reading Story Genius if you haven't already. That's helped me continue to develop my novel even if I don't have time to write it right now.
Yeah, I am a real fan of the get bored and be creative style of parenting. My kids do amazing stuff--and make huge messes, too, of course. As for the book, I've heard good things about Lisa Cron but I am allergic to that sort of novel planning book!
I get it! She actually dives into why plotter vs pantser is wrong and that neither is helpful. She walks you through slow and bite sized exercises to better round out and define your story's goal and your protagonist's interiority to drive it forward. Some things are like "well duh" until you think about your WIP and go...well shit I don't think I've done a great job with that.
You address the conundrum of how to navigate summers with children and being a mother who has aspirations outside of her family well. I dread the argument that many moms make - ‘if I can’t bring in as much as childcare costs then what’s the point?’
As someone who has worked part-time in the arts and non-profits it hasn’t been about the money. (Although I do recognize what a luxury this thinking is and do wish I paid more attention to finances- which I’m just now trying to force myself to face).
When I did work it was about having a sense of self, of maintaining an identity outside the home and my kids which has become more and more difficult to do. It’s very easy to become 100% available to your kids and home. That’s what’s encouraged by society once you become a mom. It takes so much fight- to say no I’m going to carve some time and space for myself regardless of if I make money from it.
As a Gen X who had a full-time respected working mother I was neglected. Personally, I’ve let go of the hope of having a career. The women I know who have full-time careers all have nannies. I know my children benefit from the time and availability I’ve given them. Yet, whenever asked ‘what I do?’- the dreaded question Americans are obsessed with- I’m embarrassed to answer- I used to work, but now I’m just a stay at home mom. It’s not a good look for my daughter who I’d be relieved if she chooses career over motherhood. I wish I could say women can have it all, but for most- not really in this country.
Usually, I reject how most families budget childcare--with only the mother's finances taken into account. It's a cost both parents need to bear! There is a lot more to consider too: that both parents have careers, that leaving a job long term has lifelong effects on earning potential, and, yes, one's identity and fulfillment are also important and valuable.
I feel like I've had it really good: I do not work long hours so I can be there for my kids, but I also get the time I need to write, and being a novelist is a respected career. My mom stayed home when I was very young and then went back to work, and then when I was ten she stayed home with my sister and brother and never went back to work. That was great for all of us, but I also wanted her to have some career too, for reasons I couldn't articulate--it seems we always want the opposite of what our mother has to offer! Now that I'm an adult I don't feel that way. I'm sorry you feel embarrassed to say you're a stay at home mom. It's a really special and hard job!
Apologies for being grossly late to the party - I'm always way behind on reading newsletters. Just wanted to pipe in and say that I always appreciate how completely honest you are about these kinds of parenting matters. Where I live (Portland OR), camps are SO expensive (and it is basically a blood sport to get spots in any of the expensive ones, more so for the cheaper options), almost all the registration is done in the first 2 months of the year (including the payment part, which is very challenging from a cash flow perspective), and it is very rare for any of them to actually cover a full workday or work week. My older kid, now 10yo, didn't really like any of the camps we did a couple summers ago and so when I was facing my first year needing to figure out coverage for both kids when the younger was in kinder, I was beset by a combo of hot rage and anxiety about the problem of childcare in the summer. My partner and I both work full time, but my job is from home which affords a bit more flexibility in terms of there technically being an adult at home "with" the kids.
What we did last summer and are doing again this year is that we've hired a summer nanny. I worked as a summer nanny the summer after I graduated college - I wanted to stick around and hang with my friends one more summer but was moving away in the fall, so a job that was time limited (and in my case paid cash under the table) was perfect for me. What the parents said to me when they hired me for that gig is that they needed to work, but they wanted their kids to have a lazy, unstructured summer. This year we have a college student who lives with family in the neighborhood over the summer with my kids ~24 hours a week (this works out to be about 6 hours/day for 4 days/week). They go to the public pools a lot, various parks in the area, and about once a week will do something a little more extravagant (today was the nickel arcade, but some weeks it is bowling, or out to a diner for a meal, etc). Anyway, I'm sharing because we are paying a good wage to our nanny but the cost ends up being substantially less than camps would be for 2 kids in my area. My kids get out and do fun stuff but also get a lot of time to be bored and creative and just play. And then the remaining work hours of the week sans nanny I handle with a combo of tv time and lightly monitored play time. I'm not sure what we'll do when the older is really too old for childcare but the younger one definitely still needs it.
This is amazing and I have felt all these feelings. But I love your work so much and don't want you to have to pause, unless you really want to, and I feel all the complicated feelings in this piece. This encapsulates so much. I think I just might read the whole thing again. Good luck. And also, be tender with your marriage during this time. When I quit working due to the pandemic, it felt like the only choice and yet my marriage didn't work when I wasn't earning. I didn't realize that until too late and it was probably going to end anyway, but shifting these dynamics can really muck up a marriage.
Thanks, Cindy! And, not to worry, 9 weeks (or even 12, or 15...) won't make a difference in the long run in terms of how long it takes me to finish the book. I have never written one in less than 2 years and I don't really want to write one more quickly--I need that time!
And PS I am always tender with my marriage because I love being married and sheesh I want to keep loving being married! But, yes, we're definitely talking it all out. :)
I am so curious to hear how it goes! I don't currently have the flexibility to do this, and every single May I want to quit my job and blow everything up so I can be home. Summers are outrageously expensive, which is partly on me picking the fancy camps - I feel bad that they have to go to camp in the summer & try to make up for it by picking camps that sound like a lot of fun. At this point, I'm wondering at what age a kid can be very loosely supervised for a week and still have fun. Where is the light at the end of the camp tunnel??
It's really hard! I think 10 or 11 is a good age to say no thanks to the summer camp--or choose the half-day ones, for a few weeks. Having three kids spaced four years apart really screwed me because while my oldest doesn't need camp, my others do!
I have twins who just turned 9, so this answer is exactly what I was hoping to hear! The inexpensive camps just fill up so quickly so I'm hoping for less camps, more independence, and more flexible work by next year.
It can happen! And then, the true goal is to get them WORKING over the summer some day--time to pay rent, kids! (Or at least save for a cool outfit...)
I just realized that my one young child’s combined summer camps this year will have cost us about $2000 by the time school starts again. (In Orange County, CA). And two of those weeks are just morning (9-12) camps. Yikes!
I blame the internet for the spreading of fake stories of idyllic summers. I did a Camp Mom last year when my husband did an intensive work thing. We did a lot of cool shit but I also blew up at everyone a lot for not appreciating my toiling. Anyway Big Summer is the problem, not you.
I am always blowing up about my toiling going unnoticed, lol. Big Summer IS the problem!
Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s definitely not easy being a “Camp Mom”!
I love this writing and want to see it in a national publication so that other people — non-writers, non-mothers — might read it and consider our weird and heartbreaking dichotomy of "work." ALSO: I'm excited for you to start morning pages!
You know, I considered pitching a version of this (less rambling, w/research), and decided I'd make more money posting it here. Nowadays, journalism pays so little and Substack is more lucrative--but it also means there is less reach. Ay!
And we shall see if the Morning Pages happen...but I'd love to try.
Wow, Edan. Thank you for writing this--and for always sharing the details that make solidarity amongst mothers possible. We have 4 camp-free weeks over the 9-week summer. I'm not doing them all, but splitting them with my husband. We shall see how it goes. Here's something--it doesn't cost as much as camp, but I always find I end up spending a lot during "Camp Mommy" (which is what my kids call it). Hell, even today, I had to buy treats to get us (me?) through an extremely challenging day. Anyway, good luck, and please report back!
Patrick just had to spend all weekend with Mickey at home because Mickey got Hand Foot and Mouth--and now he is like, "THE EXPERIMENT WILL FAIL." Lol. I think not being able to leave to tire a kid out AND get a treat would make it intolerable. I also spend way too much on cookies and lemonade on our outings. Oh well!
I am looking forward to a similar summer here for us, although I wasn't quite as brave and simply cut the amount of camp we have in half, so just 5 weeks over the whole summer, and most of it is boring, generic day camp run by teenagers at a community center close enough for my almost 9 year to walk to/from on her own. When camp time came around IN JANUARY (seriously wtf) I just didn't feel like figuring it out. I didn't feel like paying for childcare anymore! I don't want our summer to be over scheduled like every other season of our lives. I am still planning to work, getting up early to get my hours in while my kiddo watches too much TV and then we'll have afternoons free. Here goes nothing!
It'll be great--I hope! I decided to not write (my novel) so that I wouldn't feel resentful that I didn't have more time to do it. We shall see how that feels. I def wish I could start over parenting and never let my kids get even a taste of the fancy camps!
Reading this while on vacation in Bulgaria where I am originally from. My dad was retelling a news article he had read, incredulously, about American families and how we don't save money. I then proceeded to do a version of your math on a literal napkin for him. He told me that daycare in Bulgaria (the second poorest country in the EU) is free.
For next year I am considering bringing my kid here for the whole summer. Even if I pay two return tickets to drop her off and pick her up, it would still be cheaper than keeping her in good camps all summer. America is out of control.
I agree--it's unsustainable. Our neighbors are from Winnipeg and they send their kids there for the summer, and with flights back and forth it's still cheaper!
I might bookmark this for next year when we're figuring out how to manage summers. My husband and I are both academics but he's on the administrative side and I'm faculty which means my summers open up considerably. At the same time. I do need to work since writing time is massively scarce during the school year. I don't want to consign my son to constant summer camp because I never liked being overbooked in the summer and I think there's something valuable about hitting that boredom point where you miss your friends and the academic routine. But I am APPREHENSIVE. Crossing my fingers that this divestment goes well.
My advice to you is seek out the free camps first--the summer schools, or the low budget park camps. (My friend sends her kids to a camp that is $50 week--in LA. Why didn't I know about this?!) Keep the expectations low for kids, and they won't know what they're missing. The bougie camps are not worth it. 4 or so weeks of that will give you the time you need to focus on your work! A win-win.
I’m a high school teacher and every May I daydream about how much writing I’ll get done over the summer…and then every June I remember I have kids…and then every September I get so frustrated at the lack of work done. Sigh.
D'oh! Teachers (and teachers who are also parents!) really deserve all the money, praise, medals, and sweet treats.
This touches on so much about work and writing and parenting that I find compelling. Our CPA once calculated, unprompted, the cost/benefit of my working and us getting childcare. Needless to say, we got a new CPA! But nonetheless it has haunted me...
Thank you! And, my god, what a horrible CPA. Shame on them!
As someone who really appreciates the ways your novels capture parenthood, I’m selfishly excited to see the fruits of this experiment. You used “marinading,” I feel like there’s maybe a compost metaphor in there too? Or some super foodie fermentation technique. We also have spent money on fancy camp only to have our child tell us later it was miserable for them. I’m a mostly stay at home part time working mom and cobbling things together in the summer always makes me do the mental “is this indulgence/sacrifice for me or them” dance. I think it’s both/and sometimes and neither sometimes, like all good experiments.
Aww thank you, Elizabeth. This is definitely the goal with the summer. And my new book is about work and motherhood so it feels like a useful experiment from a creative perspective.
As a teacher, I assume I will join the Mommy Experiment as soon as my son starts kindergarten. I haven't thought of teaching as a particularly family friendly career (most times I'd say it's really not family friendly, especially compared to people with hybrid or remote jobs), but perhaps my perspective will change when I am able to stay home with him in the summer.
Oh yeah, the teacher life seems ideal for parenting--you have shorter hours (though a lot of grading, ugh), and summers off. So good! One of my sisters is a high school teacher and have never once sent her kids to camp.
Our work week is still 40 hours but our contract is 196 days. The issue is pay. I used to think nurses and teachers had similar pay grades, but that’s not the case anymore (RNs in our area make 80K in their first year, it took me 13 years to make that salary…). 🫠
As an employee, I’d rather have a shorter work week year round and get rid of the 8 week summer break, but that’s not popular among my colleagues.
Teachers are criminally underpaid! It's so fucked up. All teachers should start at $70k--AT LEAST.
This post is very similar to what I'm going through! I did bump my toddler up to 3 days a week in daycare (up from two, my husband is a firefighter so he's home for days at a time so full time daycare never made sense) but having my six year old home all the time has been rewarding and challenging. I quickly realized camps were not going to work because of price and duration (10-12 for two weeks?? In a city 25 min away?? No thanks). So I've embraced the "you might be bored deal with it" mentality I had to do as a kid when both my parents worked full time also. So far it has created massive messes but also has spurred creativity from my kiddo as I work a corporate job full time. I will say this change in schedule for summer means my writing is dusty and neglected.
Try reading Story Genius if you haven't already. That's helped me continue to develop my novel even if I don't have time to write it right now.
Yeah, I am a real fan of the get bored and be creative style of parenting. My kids do amazing stuff--and make huge messes, too, of course. As for the book, I've heard good things about Lisa Cron but I am allergic to that sort of novel planning book!
I get it! She actually dives into why plotter vs pantser is wrong and that neither is helpful. She walks you through slow and bite sized exercises to better round out and define your story's goal and your protagonist's interiority to drive it forward. Some things are like "well duh" until you think about your WIP and go...well shit I don't think I've done a great job with that.
You address the conundrum of how to navigate summers with children and being a mother who has aspirations outside of her family well. I dread the argument that many moms make - ‘if I can’t bring in as much as childcare costs then what’s the point?’
As someone who has worked part-time in the arts and non-profits it hasn’t been about the money. (Although I do recognize what a luxury this thinking is and do wish I paid more attention to finances- which I’m just now trying to force myself to face).
When I did work it was about having a sense of self, of maintaining an identity outside the home and my kids which has become more and more difficult to do. It’s very easy to become 100% available to your kids and home. That’s what’s encouraged by society once you become a mom. It takes so much fight- to say no I’m going to carve some time and space for myself regardless of if I make money from it.
As a Gen X who had a full-time respected working mother I was neglected. Personally, I’ve let go of the hope of having a career. The women I know who have full-time careers all have nannies. I know my children benefit from the time and availability I’ve given them. Yet, whenever asked ‘what I do?’- the dreaded question Americans are obsessed with- I’m embarrassed to answer- I used to work, but now I’m just a stay at home mom. It’s not a good look for my daughter who I’d be relieved if she chooses career over motherhood. I wish I could say women can have it all, but for most- not really in this country.
Usually, I reject how most families budget childcare--with only the mother's finances taken into account. It's a cost both parents need to bear! There is a lot more to consider too: that both parents have careers, that leaving a job long term has lifelong effects on earning potential, and, yes, one's identity and fulfillment are also important and valuable.
I feel like I've had it really good: I do not work long hours so I can be there for my kids, but I also get the time I need to write, and being a novelist is a respected career. My mom stayed home when I was very young and then went back to work, and then when I was ten she stayed home with my sister and brother and never went back to work. That was great for all of us, but I also wanted her to have some career too, for reasons I couldn't articulate--it seems we always want the opposite of what our mother has to offer! Now that I'm an adult I don't feel that way. I'm sorry you feel embarrassed to say you're a stay at home mom. It's a really special and hard job!
Apologies for being grossly late to the party - I'm always way behind on reading newsletters. Just wanted to pipe in and say that I always appreciate how completely honest you are about these kinds of parenting matters. Where I live (Portland OR), camps are SO expensive (and it is basically a blood sport to get spots in any of the expensive ones, more so for the cheaper options), almost all the registration is done in the first 2 months of the year (including the payment part, which is very challenging from a cash flow perspective), and it is very rare for any of them to actually cover a full workday or work week. My older kid, now 10yo, didn't really like any of the camps we did a couple summers ago and so when I was facing my first year needing to figure out coverage for both kids when the younger was in kinder, I was beset by a combo of hot rage and anxiety about the problem of childcare in the summer. My partner and I both work full time, but my job is from home which affords a bit more flexibility in terms of there technically being an adult at home "with" the kids.
What we did last summer and are doing again this year is that we've hired a summer nanny. I worked as a summer nanny the summer after I graduated college - I wanted to stick around and hang with my friends one more summer but was moving away in the fall, so a job that was time limited (and in my case paid cash under the table) was perfect for me. What the parents said to me when they hired me for that gig is that they needed to work, but they wanted their kids to have a lazy, unstructured summer. This year we have a college student who lives with family in the neighborhood over the summer with my kids ~24 hours a week (this works out to be about 6 hours/day for 4 days/week). They go to the public pools a lot, various parks in the area, and about once a week will do something a little more extravagant (today was the nickel arcade, but some weeks it is bowling, or out to a diner for a meal, etc). Anyway, I'm sharing because we are paying a good wage to our nanny but the cost ends up being substantially less than camps would be for 2 kids in my area. My kids get out and do fun stuff but also get a lot of time to be bored and creative and just play. And then the remaining work hours of the week sans nanny I handle with a combo of tv time and lightly monitored play time. I'm not sure what we'll do when the older is really too old for childcare but the younger one definitely still needs it.
The nanny is a great idea--if you can find one! That's great that you've got one set up. Sounds like a solid plan! xoxo
This is amazing and I have felt all these feelings. But I love your work so much and don't want you to have to pause, unless you really want to, and I feel all the complicated feelings in this piece. This encapsulates so much. I think I just might read the whole thing again. Good luck. And also, be tender with your marriage during this time. When I quit working due to the pandemic, it felt like the only choice and yet my marriage didn't work when I wasn't earning. I didn't realize that until too late and it was probably going to end anyway, but shifting these dynamics can really muck up a marriage.
Thanks, Cindy! And, not to worry, 9 weeks (or even 12, or 15...) won't make a difference in the long run in terms of how long it takes me to finish the book. I have never written one in less than 2 years and I don't really want to write one more quickly--I need that time!
And PS I am always tender with my marriage because I love being married and sheesh I want to keep loving being married! But, yes, we're definitely talking it all out. :)
I am so curious to hear how it goes! I don't currently have the flexibility to do this, and every single May I want to quit my job and blow everything up so I can be home. Summers are outrageously expensive, which is partly on me picking the fancy camps - I feel bad that they have to go to camp in the summer & try to make up for it by picking camps that sound like a lot of fun. At this point, I'm wondering at what age a kid can be very loosely supervised for a week and still have fun. Where is the light at the end of the camp tunnel??
It's really hard! I think 10 or 11 is a good age to say no thanks to the summer camp--or choose the half-day ones, for a few weeks. Having three kids spaced four years apart really screwed me because while my oldest doesn't need camp, my others do!
I have twins who just turned 9, so this answer is exactly what I was hoping to hear! The inexpensive camps just fill up so quickly so I'm hoping for less camps, more independence, and more flexible work by next year.
It can happen! And then, the true goal is to get them WORKING over the summer some day--time to pay rent, kids! (Or at least save for a cool outfit...)
I just realized that my one young child’s combined summer camps this year will have cost us about $2000 by the time school starts again. (In Orange County, CA). And two of those weeks are just morning (9-12) camps. Yikes!
So fucking expensive!