The kids are too busy
And the parents are going insane.
In the Nineties, at the peak of my recreational performing arts career, dance recital tickets were the biggest ordeal in town. One Sunday morning each year, parents lined up outside of the studio and waited their turn to purchase. But they started arriving earlier and earlier, until one parent decided to pitch a tent. Then another. Within a couple of dance seasons, parents had to arrive overnight if they even wanted a shot at finding decent seats to watch their little babies grace the stage in all their glittering glory. Of course, my parents submitted themselves to this madness; they never became “tent people” but always showed up early enough to purchase tickets within a solid line of vision to me. Plus, it was just one morning. One small sliver of parental sacrifice to achieve a near certain outcome for their kid.
As a parent today, I don’t know that feeling.
Everything is a production. Extracurricular activities run four days a week and book four months out. Programs are at capacity the minute registration opens. Summer camp tours are selling out for next summer just to potentially attend two summers from now. There are more deposits. More sign-up sheets. More consultants. More deadlines. More. Everything is more.
We are at the start of a new school year, which means the family unit’s annual reset button has just been pressed. The apps are refreshing, and it’s unclear whose will update first. Many of my friends have children in different schools for the first time, and I, like them, have transformed into a full-time child chief of staff, clinging onto my logistics for dear life.
Technology contributes to this madness. On one hand, signing up for swim lessons at the click of a button is more seamless than handing in a physical form, but committing to things with such ease carries its own set of problems, including actually following through. Just last month, I forgot about my daughter’s craft camp during the week between camp and school, because I had to register her five months ago and never received a reminder. But that was a benign summer mishap compared to the scheduling gymnastics for this fall. Parents are frantic. Facebook babysitting boards display dozens of the same desperate requests for after-school babysitters who drive. Some parents believed they’d be allowed to maintain flexible work schedules but were hailed back to their offices. Others just can’t be in three places at once. In both conundrums, there seemed to be this running theme of “commit now, sort it out later,” based on whatever scant information we had and hopes we could predict the future. But most of us are not Madame Clairevoyant. We cannot use the moons and planets to predict whether our children will need three or five days of aftercare nine months from now.
Now more than ever, “sort it out later” isn’t working.
Demand is a contributing factor, too. The pandemic motivated many millennial families to flee metropolitan areas, but most landed in suburbs within commuting distance to the cities they left. Communities, like mine in New Jersey, do not have the infrastructure to support the shotgun needs of our demographic. That means more parents are fighting for the same number of slots for just about everything. And people talk. When word gets around that space might be tight, anxiety mounts. Our loose interest mutates into an intense need. Is the program that great, or is it just full? It doesn’t matter. We have to have it and will deploy Ticketmaster tactics. We know how to get what we want, so why not commit to an updated version of the sacrifice my parents made waiting in line for those dance tickets, if it will get our children what they need?
Here is the problem: everything is like this now. The window to participate is almost closed before it opens. We have no margin of error whatsoever. For example, my daughter’s dance registration opened at midnight (which is kind of an act of violence in itself, but I digress). Last year, I signed her up later on the day registration opened and was fine. But the anxious anecdata (collected from mom text groups) suggested maybe I should be more vigilant. I brought my laptop upstairs to log in first thing in the morning. Around 12:20 a.m., I had to use the bathroom and saw my laptop. I figured, why not check if I’m thinking about it, anyway? The classes were damn near sold out. If I had used the bathroom at 1 a.m., she might have needed to wait an entire calendar year to enroll in dance. I don’t want to be this crazy; it cuts against my soul. But I also don’t want my daughters to miss out because I brought a butter knife to a sword fight.
Some would say, this is our fault. We are a generation of more, wildly competitive in ways borne from our upbringings that taught us to always be seeking. One thing must lead to another and then to another. I believe this exists on both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. People who grew up with less, of course, want more for their kids. And people who grew up with more expect their kids to play at the same level they did; if not literally, then at least through a notion that greatness can be achieved by consuming more resources. More tutors. More private lessons. We are also the first full generation of Social Media Parents, wildly susceptible to digital pressure and a compulsive desire to narrate for our children.
We are not the only culprits, though. The demands of our own schedules dictate our children’s. A public school day that ends at 3 p.m. is not conducive for dual-income households, but it remains the standard despite our evolving needs. Unlike our parent’s generation, many millennials do not live down the block from family anymore. We have no choice but to cull together some semblance of childcare for the hours (and months) our kids are not in school. Keeping them busy is not an act of avoidance but one of professional survival to withstand dynamics that did not always exist. And if there are opportunities for them to receive care and be enriched, that consolation eases our guilt.
Unfortunately, our little sacrifices of time and energy to secure things for our kids are adding up and wearing us thin. The means and methods are spiraling out of control. It’s not reasonable to exist in a perpetual state of triage, knowing you are one missed alarm away from failure. The mental load is heavy, and it mostly falls on mothers. It’s why the mothers I know—those who work and those who don’t—are awake in the middle of the night jotting reminders on their iPhones. Why I started writing this newsletter at 3 a.m. and couldn’t think straight enough to finish it for a week.
The hardest part is acceptance.
You will miss something. You may not even know that you’re missing something, because it’s based on a future variable you haven’t thought of yet. Your child might be disappointed. You might get caught in a lurch. But our wins and our losses in this arena have to be okay.
My mentor once shared with me an analogy that resonates on a personal and professional level. We have many balls in the air. Some are wiffle balls and some are made of glass. You can’t juggle forever—some will drop. They always do. But you can protect the glass ones from shattering, so long as you acknowledge that the wiffle balls can fall. We are not perfect. Nothing about this circus is.
September bringing you to the brink? Email me: averagejoelle3@gmail.com.
The little things
A not-so-little thing. After twelve years of lawyering in the insurance industry, today is my last day. I won’t say forever but for now. I am feeling all sorts of wild and wonderful feelings about my next chapter, which you will learn more about soon. For the next month, though, I will rest. I will try to rest. I hope I can rest!
Also
As someone who struggles with transitional weather and overthinks my outfit for any first impression, I loved this essay in The New York Times about school drop-off attire.
Your wins
My childhood friend Shana returned to work this week after a four-month maternity leave with her beautiful twin girls. She’s amazing.