Maria Shriver: Summer vacation more stressful than anything else
carefree summer vacations are great for kids but difficult and expensive for parents
Why are school vacations so out of sync with the needs of working parents?
Our question hit a nerve with Maria Shriver, the author of the Shriver Report: A Women’s Nation Changes Everything.
Summer break “is almost more stressful than everything else the entire school year for my family,” Shriver told Mary Kate Cary of the Thomas Jefferson Street blog yesterday.
Shriver feels that government, business, the media, and faith-based organizations are out of step with what women and men are experiencing on the ground, she told Cary yesterday.
Heavy textbooks in backpacks and a 9-to-3 school schedule haven’t kept up, she said, adding, “Changes have taken place, but these institutions didn’t get the memo. People are angry about it.”
This issue affects working women of all backgrounds. If someone like Shriver (who presumably has the means to pay for high quality summer care) is affected, imagine the problem for a low income family struggling to make ends meet.
I agree with Shriver. I spend months worrying, feeling guilty and sweating over the ten weeks of summer vacation. If I work during the vacation, I feel guilty of robbing my kids of some kind of hazy, lazy summer vacation of yore. If they’re in camp, I worry about the quality and the cost.
And I worry my work suffers because I am NEVER EVER stress-free when they’re at camp.
Does my husband worry about the kids over summer? Nope. He thinks I am overreacting, but like nearly every working mother I know, I am the one who organizes, selects and manages the logistics over the 10 weeks while juggling a full-time job.
Friends tell me: “Max will spend a weekend with gma, then we’ll drive him to Philly where he’ll spend a week with cousins, then back for two weeks of summer camp, then soccer over at Silver Spring …” and it goes on.
President Obama says that long summer holidays are an anachronism, a hang over from an agrarian society.
Long summer vacations are also an equity issue.
As author Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Outliers:
“For its poorest students, America doesn’t have a school problem,” Gladwell concludes. “It has a summer-vacation problem.” So how to close the gap between rich and poor students?
Get real about summer vacation! Think about making schools more responsive to the needs of working parents.
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/redwoodcovenant/
Related Posts:
Filed Under: Featured • Managing Your Career • Working Moms Resources
About the Author: Julie Power is a writer and editor with experience in both the United States and Australia. After living in the United States for 16 years, she recently returned to live in Sydney with her husband and twin boys (9 years old).
Follow @juliepower
MomsToWork RSS Feed
