Summer Camps - a headache and anxieties to parents but such a lucrative business
Not sure about you, I was half excited and half afraid of the starting of the summer, because of the summer camps. On one hand, I am excited for kids to try all kinds of day camps, baseball, golfing and even indoor rock climbing; however, all those commute and logistics really worried me. In addition, lots of camps are only half day, once they are back home, how are they going to spend that long hot afternoon while we both are working. So in this article, we're talking about summer camps and why it becomes such a hot mess for parents.
In the United States, the summer camp movement dated back to late-19th century which echoed the fear of "the moral and physical degradation of urban life". After the WWII, the now-familiar camp anxieties started to develop [1], a 1953 article even quoted that:
The real time to start arranging for a youngster’s summer is the Fourth of July the year before.
What had been changed
Back to the days, the camp used to be simple – an organization would run a 10-week long camps, but nowadays, lots of camps are weekly day camps, and parents are playing the drop-off and pick-up game from camp A to camp B constantly.
The second part is parents' expectation. Used to be that they just need a place to keep kids and have them play to spend the long summer time; nowadays, it's about whether the camp has an educational component. Even sometimes there's a worksheet or homework involved in summer camps.
This is not even mentioning the higher cost due to the inflation since Covid-19 as well as how early the parents need to start to plan them, typically right after winter break these days.
Why summer camp is a hot mess for parents
- The root cause is parents don't get summer off and more and more family have both parents working full-time. This country is not like Europe which has a summer vacation culture, here, the work is always on and the max vacation you could ask is typically as long as a few weeks. However, most school is off at the mid point of June all the way till labor day.
- Secondly, the price point. Most of the day camp charges above $300. At $300 to $400 per week, the whole summer will cost about $3,000. This is the regular camp; sometimes, for special camps, like a horse camp I've send kid once, it charges $800, also need to spend another $200 to buy riding gears. This is not even mentioning some sleep-away camps - which could be over $10K sometimes.
- In addition, hard to find and choose these camps, though there're some aggregation websites national wide (CampsUSA.org, ActivityHero.com, etc), summer camp is still a hyper local business. What camps to choose, how do you distribute them are way more tricky than holiday shopping – typically, there's a highlighted or star camps that you somehow win the lottery or get chosen earlier, and then there're "role player" camps that you need to fit in; after all, there're just some weeks or half week you need to bear the consequence that kids will be staying at home for days. I bet every parent has a mini calendar or spreadsheet to plan this out week by week.
- The use of electronic devices and isolated urban life leave all these planning burden to parents. When I was a kid, growing up in China, there's no summer camps. We just play in the summer – play with classmates and play with neighbor kids. My summer routine was eating one watermelon every day and hung a key on my neck and go out to play the whole afternoon. Or get sent to my grandparents' home for a couple of weeks. Nowadays, with the small family, busy work life, there become more helicopter parents with anxiety and over-planning. As pointed out by the article by Bloomberg article, the meaning of summer camp has evolved over time, but it always reflected society’s aspirations and anxieties.
- Furthermore, the quality of the camp is inconsistent, and the repetitiveness is low. Given the seasonality of the business, lots of camps hires hourly worker only, and they're no experts on children education and last minute coach no-show does happen often. On the other hand, there's typically no feedback loop to tell parent how the kids are actually doing after the camp, so no systematic follow-up afterwards. After the week, done is done, thus, parents normally won't return to the same camps for another level next year.
- Lastly, the registration of the camp is messy. For the cheaper camps, frequently, it is sponsored by certain level of government, you would see it's quite competing to get a spot, or a long waiting list. There're no central review systems to somehow helping parents, typically, the discovery is depending on word of mouth. So kids in the same friend circle all going to similar camps, not a good thing for kids to explore something new.
All in all, there are no set prices, no consistent dates, no agreed-upon time to register. The above are part of the reasons that resulting in parents' struggles amidst the summer camp chaos.
However, on the other hand, it's a quite lucrative business
Per refernece [2], the summer camp business is reaching a market cap at $3.5B, and it's still growing, partly due to the inflation. It's actually not that hard to start and run your own summer camp business. I know from my personal friends circle, many education programs have a summer camp offerings and are quite busy for the whole summer. Given the seasonality of the business, unless it's a mature one, it's relatively hard to get started from scratch and only offering at summer time, so maybe that's the hard entry point for new comers and objectively, less choices for kids.
Does a better model exist?
Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet solution for this problem, parents are just need to find a balance themselves. This is also tight to the crumbling childcare system in this country [3], no enough investment gave to early childcare for a long time which could be the topic for another week.
Conclusion
Parents probably have to accept the messy reality of summer camps. On one hand, lessen the expectation of how much the education aspect it might have, and also manage well the costs assocaited with it. We just need to calm down and enjoy a little bit, parents! It is through this journey that we come to realize again that life's messiness is not something to fear, but rather an essential part of our growth and the pathway to a more fulfilling existence. And to children, no outcome is linear, maybe after many years, the type of work or hobby kids have is due to the sparks they experienced at a random camp many many years before.
References
[1] how summer camp became such a hot mess for parents
