It’s that time of year again. The one most of the women in my life have been dreading. The eight-week primary school summer holidays. The other day I high-fived an 11-year-old on reaching the final days of fifth class and mere seconds later commiserated their mother on the long slog ahead. Of course, it is 2025 and I’m not attempting to invoke misandry, but it is the majority of the women in the heteronormative couples I observe who organise the childcare. It’s they who know where the children are at all times, where they’re supposed to be, and who is dropping, collecting, carpooling and weeding out potentially deadly allergens from party bags.
For those working parents without full-time childcare year-round, the school holidays thrust them into a logistical nightmare of summer camps, working from home with liberal time theft, grandparent help and annual leave. I’m firmly of the “school is not a parenting substitute” opinion, but it is at least a notionally safe space which keeps the kids on site for a portion of the traditional nine-to-five working day.
It is demonstrably berserk that there is such a disparity between the time a child spends in school and the hours a working parent spends at their job. A school near me finishes up at 2.15pm, meaning hours of after-school clubs, minders, nanny shares and reciprocal play dates. And then the holidays roll around and all the parents in a workplace are battling to secure the same tiny time frame of annual leave while attempting to fill the gaps with the art camps and forest schools and football frenzies, mostly manned by disinterested teenagers on their own interminable summer break.
[ Children’s summer camps: From the cost to the hours – are they working for you?Opens in new window ]
Don’t get me wrong, I think summer holidays are the business. For the kids, for the teachers, for the blessed reprieve in traffic. It’s the relentless grind of the capitalist machine and the insistence of this arbitrary 40-hour-a-week, year-round labour system that’s the issue.
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To be able to afford to, say, own a family home, two incomes are a necessity for most these days. The crazy expense of childcare obviously eats into those incomes, but the childcare is also a necessity because of the discrepancy between schooling and working hours. Ideally one parent would provide the childcare, but then you’re back to square one and not being able to afford a home. It’s almost like … it’s designed this way.
The Juggle: the issues facing women with young children when balancing childcare and their careers
Even for those rare set-ups where one parent is available to provide full-time childcare or at least combine it with working from home, there’s the intense fear of the “I’m bored” refrain. I spent so much of my childhood “bored”. Pre-TV streaming, pre-devices and phones, and a rural setting meant assuaging the boredom required a lot of creativity, invention or just being okay with reading a book for five hours. It also came with increased perceived safety and freedom so that heading off on a bike for three hours at the age of 10 didn’t come with any particular anxiety.
The children of 2025 know that there is an ever-present salve for their boredom: screens. In the summer months it becomes a battle of wills between conscientious parents and their offspring, the former delivering the message that it’s okay to be bored and the latter retaliating with an almighty round of door slamming and I-hate-yous. I get it, I really do. If I was a child living through this age of tablets and gaming consoles and endless Netflix Kids I’d be agitating for 12 hours of screen time a day. This is one of the many, many reasons I don’t have children. I’d find it difficult to deny a child their right to develop square eyes if it meant that I could keep up my own unhealthy daily scrolling habit.
[ The summer juggle: How to work while the kids are offOpens in new window ]
A friend has managed to secure the holy grail of summer camps – one that keeps the children even longer than the school day. Of course, it’s costing her the equivalent of several weeks at a luxury all-inclusive resort, but I believe many parents would sell a kidney for just a brief reprieve from being talked at and questioned from sun up to sundown. There are the snits who will say “don’t have children if you don’t want to spend time with them”, but the expectation on parents these days to be ever-present in their children’s lives while also working the 40-hour week and keeping a brave face amid the general horrors of the world is frankly deranged. Bring on the six-hour working day and the four-day week. Give parents a chance.
