Why Summer Break is No Break for Working Parents

You're not the problem; summer is just hard!

I’m sitting in the parking lot of our neighborhood swimming pool, wrapping up a Zoom call and emails while my kids finish morning swim practice. This is my typical morning during summer break.

No 7 am breakfast complaints. No stressing over tests. No permission slips to sign while

sprinting out the door. No homework, teacher gifts, or silly dress-up days. And yet. My stress goes up every June.

Sound familiar? Why is it that Summer Break is anything BUT a break for working parents, especially working moms?

The part of parenting no one warned us about

Dropping off my oldest for sleepaway camp after I took work calls on the drive

When you prepare to have a kid, you're warned all about the delivery, the not sleeping, the terrible twos, and the sibling rivalry.

But I don't remember a single person or book warning me about the complexities, the stress, and the increased financial burden of having dependable childcare during the summer while you're working.

I'm convinced it's one of the biggest secrets! At work, your calendar doesn’t pause for summer. Your team and clients still need you. Your sales goals don’t get a grace period.

Why is summer break so stressful for working moms

From the outside, summer break looks fun and laid back! But when you’re the one painfully planning out the summer six months before it's even here and then executing on the patchwork quilt of childcare coverage, you know the pain:

•       Researching every camp option week by week, kid by kid, including age restrictions, registration dates, costs, weeks and times, drive time, lunch included or not

Put a finger down for each one that rings true for you too.

•       Filling out every registration form repeatedly with every child’s name, nickname, DOB, insurance, allergies, and every other painful detail for every single camp

•       Finding a summer sitter who isn’t heading back to college in early August and leaving you with no coverage for 2–3 weeks

•       Covering the gaps. No camp that week or camp gets cancelled due to weather. Sitter gets sick or her car breaks down. She goes on vacation.

•       Checking your phone constantly to remember where you’re driving this week while pretending to be fully focused at work

•       Doing all of it while running a big project, hitting a sales goal, leading a team, saving a client, insert your version of work stress here.

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The complexity of the summer schedule

Every week looks different. Full-day camps. Half-day morning camps. Afternoon camps. Sleepaway weeks. Twice-a-day swim and dive practices. The schedule is a puzzle you rebuild from scratch every seven days.

You are suddenly running a full-time, pro bono family logistics operation that changes every week on top of a full-time job that expects you to show up every day c

completely present.

And if you have kids in that brutal in-between stage (mine are 10 and 12), you know exactly what I mean. Too old for all-day camp. Too young to stay home alone. Old enough to have strong opinions about every sitter and activity. Too young to do anything about it themselves.

Making sure summer childcare is covered is more than just one item on a parent's to-do list.

The additional cost of summer sitters and camps

Childcare in the U.S. now costs more than the average rent. A full-time summer sitter runs at least $800 a week. Babysitters are typically charging $25/hour for two kids. Summer camps range from $400/week for all-day programs to $2,000/week for high-end sleepaway camps.

You’re burning cash and burning energy simultaneously while being expected to perform like neither is happening.

The additional mental load of summer for parents

None of this may sound or look hard on the outside until you're the one who has to do it all single-handedly. And usually, the painfully detailed planning and execution of those plans falls on the moms even if they get paid to work outside the home.

From planning the summer camp schedule, planning the vacation, packing for the vacation, planning the meals (they have to eat again?!) , finding the sitters, plus driving them around all summer and feeling like the worst paid Uber driver ever, it's increasingly hard during the summer months.

Just know you're not alone and you're not doing it wrong. Most parents, especially those who get paid to work outside the home, feel this way too. And then they'll be back to school, and you'll miss them while also celebrating their return. After all, that's parenthood!

The family support gap Sherah was built for

Delegating big projects like summer childcare coverage frees up time but it also alleviates the mental and emotional stress for the default parent who takes on most if not all of the family to-dos.

Sherah can’t drive your kids unfortunately. Trust me, we looked into it and the insurance costs are insane. Even more than summer camps!

But we can find great sitters and drivers, research and register kids for camps, handle the forms, pick up vax records from the pediatrician, book sitters to cover the gaps, and take the entire logistics puzzle off your plate.

When you delegate the planning and execution, you don’t just get time back. You get mental space back. The default parent tax, the one where you carry 90% of the invisible work even when you’re also working full time, stops being paid entirely by you.

You don’t have to overhaul your life to feel the difference. Start small. Delegate a few things. See what it feels like to not be the one responsible for everything. Then decide.

We hear from working moms at Sherah all the time who thought they were the only ones struggling. Or that they were the problem.

You’re not the problem. You’re under-supported.

Off to swim practice I go,

Kristin

Curious what a Sherah membership looks like?

Start with a free trial. Delegate a few things. See what it feels like to not be the one responsible for everything all by yourself.

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