Every June, the school year ends, and the framework that kept us afloat all year vanishes. If you’re lucky, your child is in camp. If you’re very lucky, camp goes past 3 p.m. And if you’re really lucky, it doesn’t cost as much as a mortgage payment.
A time that signifies fun and freedom for our kids is a three-month scheduling nightmare for adults. And the strange part is everyone knows it’s coming, yet many workplaces expect parents to function as though nothing in their daily life has changed. After talking to dozens of parents about this, coupled with my own experience, I realize that summer doesn’t just make parenting harder. It exposes how much modern work life depends on schools functioning as our most reliable childcare.
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At their limit
Many working parents are already at their limit. They’re managing jobs, homework, doctors’ appointments, sick days, sports schedules, dinner, and emotional meltdowns (the kids’ and their own). Then school ends and summer logistics are anxiety-inducing: What do I do with them all day? Are there any affordable sitters? Who has camp this week? Is there aftercare? Why is there no camp the week before school starts?
A recent Bright Horizons/Harris Poll survey found that 90% of working parents lose sleep over planning summer childcare and schedules. That sounds overly dramatic until you have personally tried to create an eight-week childcare plan around work deadlines and a ridiculously early pick-up window.
And the cost is crazy. The Bipartisan Policy Center reported in 2026 that families pay an average of $13,128 per child annually for care. That is about 10% of income for dual-income households and 35% for single-income households. Summer care can be an additional cost, impacting family vacation and back-to-school budgets. So when people ask, “Why don’t parents just put their kids in camp?” The answer is, many do and they still have a problem.
New solutions
We need strategies beyond those annoyingly cheerful parenting productivity hacks. For the last several years, we have talked about flexibility, hybrid work, AI, productivity, and the future of work in America. But summer reveals the limits of all that innovation.
Hybrid work helps, but working from home with children in the house is not childcare. It’s doing your job while someone asks if they can make slime and have a fourth popsicle. AI can summarize a meeting, but it can’t pick up your child from soccer camp. The future of work may be digital, but parenting remains aggressively human. Children will always need rides, meals, supervision, sunscreen, and someone to notice that they have eaten nothing but Pirate’s Booty since 9 a.m.
What to do
So what are parents supposed to do?
First, they have to stop treating summer like a problem they have to solve alone. One of the lessons from my book, How to Have a Kid and a Life, is that parents, especially mothers, often get trapped by the idea that needing help means they’re failing. But modern parenting was never meant to be a solo gig.
When I was young, my parents dropped me at my grandparents’ house across town. No one was developing my executive functioning skills with a loom activity, but my parents knew I was cared for. Just as important, they could be late without risking a $50 fee. Many families don’t have that option now. Grandparents live far away, they may still be working, they may have health issues, or be unwilling to help. Some parents are doing this without extended family, a partner, extra cash, or jobs that let them disappear at 2:50 every afternoon.
So “ask for help” can’t mean just turn to a relative. It means building a more honest support plan. What does that look like? It might mean asking another parent to trade pickup days before you’re desperate. It might mean creating a small summer co-op with two or three families where each parent covers one afternoon per week. It might mean hiring a college student with another family instead of trying to carry the full cost alone. It might mean asking a neighbor, aunt, grandparent, or friend for one specific thing: “Could you take the kids from 3 to 5 on Tuesdays in July?” Not, “Can you help sometime?” Specific asks are easier to say yes to.
It might mean using PTO strategically for the no-camp weeks instead of burning through random days throughout the summer. It might mean letting older kids have more independence if they’re ready.
And it definitely means lowering the bar on summer magic. Not every week needs to be enriching, and not every day needs to be memory-making. Some summer days are going to have too much screen time, cereal for lunch, and a parent saying “Please do not make any noise during my call unless something is on fire.” Don’t think of it as a failure; it’s just a Tuesday.
Companies need to step up
But parents cannot be the only ones adapting. Employers need to stop treating summer as the employee’s problem and start treating it as a workforce reality. Companies could make this season less brutal by instituting summer meeting rules: fewer late-afternoon meetings, no unnecessary meetings after 3 p.m., and more asynchronous communication.
They can also offer true summer flexibility, and not just the vague kind where parents are allowed to adjust their schedules but then look less committed. They can provide backup care benefits, childcare stipends, or access to vetted summer programs. They can normalize summer Fridays across the organization so parents aren’t forced to out themselves as the needy ones. They can train managers to plan around summer instead of acting surprised when parents have more complicated calendars. And maybe they can stop confusing visibility with productivity.
The real summer solution is not pretending parents can hack their way out of a broken system. It’s admitting that summer requires a different operating model at home and at work.
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