December 2024
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy recently drew attention to something many of us are painfully aware of: Parenting today is too darn stressful. And just like smoking or infectious diseases, it can actually harm our health.
If you haven’t come across this news, you can read the full advisory and key take-aways here. The New York Times also has some great coverage of the topic including a guest essay by Murthy as well as an eye-opening article and episode of the Daily podcast.
I stress, you stress, we all stress about parenting
In the advisory, Murthy writes that “the significant mental labor involved with parenting—balancing complex schedules, anticipating a child’s evolving needs, making countless decisions each day on behalf of a child, and monitoring progress—can limit working memory capacity and negatively impact attentional resources, cognitive functioning, and psychological well-being.”
Well, yeah. Wait, what were you saying? I momentarily lost the thread here because I was wondering if I’ll have time to get dinner started between my next zoom call and swim team pick-up, and also, should I ask the older one how her audition went or is it better to be chill and let her bring it up, and also, do we need to go over math homework for the younger one tonight, or is there no homework but he needs to go to bed early because there’s a test tomorrow?
Right. Complex schedules, countless decisions. Stress.
According to data cited in the advisory, Murthy notes that parents today spend more time working AND more time caring for their children than they did a few decades ago. (Take a sec to let that sink in.) We also do this in an environment that has more stressors—from the lingering effects of the pandemic to worries about school safety, online bullying, social media, and more.
Sharing the burden
Many of the issues behind the surgeon general’s concern are big, society-level problems, and they need big, society-level solutions. It’s not just a matter of chilling out—it’s about changing the ways in which our economic, social, and cultural environments shape how we live and parent. That said, there’s a lot that we can do at the level of individuals, families, and communities to lighten parents’ loads.
Could camp be part of the answer? At KidsBooked, we believe that camp is good for kids and parents. For kids, camp offers new experiences—often fun and sometimes challenging—that give them a chance to grow. Interacting with a broader array of peers and adult role models expands their horizons and can foster a more open mindset.
For parents, camps not only provide childcare while we work (which itself is hugely important!)—they can also shoulder some of the work of raising kids. A well-chosen camp can become part of the “village” that helps to impart values, create community, and holistically support kids’ needs for things like physical activity, time in nature, and time building relationships, all in one place.
Breaking the pressure-cooker cycle
At the same time, there is a risk that choosing camps and activities can itself become a source of stress that is detrimental to both kids and parents. The surgeon general notes that an intensifying “culture of comparison” and pressure to meet perceived parenting standards can contribute to parents’ stress. This creates a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses style of camp selection where families make choices driven less by what’s right for their kid and more by a desire to help them get ahead of what their “competitors” are doing in sports, the arts, or schoolwork—perhaps even with an eye toward getting into an elite college one day.
We hope that KidsBooked can help families break free of that pressure-cooker cycle by providing a way to explore more options and find solutions that are truly a good fit—not because your coworker said it’s THE camp to get into, but because it actually suits your kid’s personality and meets your family’s needs. We also hope that by making the whole act of finding and booking camps and activities more streamlined, KidsBooked can help trim the time you spend on these tasks, perhaps leaving you with a smidge more breathing space for your own pursuits (anyone up for tennis or basket weaving like those laid-back parents in the ‘70s?). And, with tools that foster connections among local parents, we hope we can even help to build a sense of community and alleviate some of the loneliness of parenting.
In short: it is our hope that KidsBooked can help make a teensy dent in the monumental challenge of parenting today. So, take a deep breath, and appreciate that lots of parents feel your pain. It’s not you, it’s (waves hands) all of it. And together we can help to make it better.
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