Cobbling together summer childcare as a working parent/caregiver
My LinkedIn feed has been chock full of working moms, parents and caregivers alike bemoaning the struggle of trying to line up summer childcare. In February, some are even making spreadsheets that track costs of camps, ages of children they accept, what weeks/times they run and when registration opens up. While many Summer day camps are not affordable for most parents and families with modest or even median level incomes, especially with multiple children, Summer childcare costs will more closely resemble a second mortgage or home rental payment. But aside from the huge factor of cost and affordability, there’s also the struggle of availability.
Sign ups for Summer Camp will open months in advance, as early as January in some places. You will have to submit deposits and fill out the paperwork way ahead of the Summer break. But more often working mothers will encounter wait lists. And did we mention the sky high prices of wildly unavailable and unaffordable Summer day camps typically don’t even cover a full work day? Most run on an 8.30am-3.30pm CST or even 9am-2pm CST schedule that doesn’t align with an 8am-5pm or 9am-5pm work day. What is a working mom or working parent to do? All that is left to most working parents and working moms is to scrap together their own support system or village, whether through paid support like nannies and babysitters or through relying on grandparents or friend groups. It has turned into an individual problem to solve although it requires a solution on a much bigger scale.
A study conducted by Pregnant then Screwed in July 2025, showed that more than a fifth (26%) of parents reported being forced to take unpaid leave last summer. Childcare costs during the summer also placed a strain on family finances and affording things like essentials. 40% of the participants studied reported a struggle to afford them because of Summer childcare costs.
In an interview with HR magazine, Rachel Grocott, Pregnant Then Screwed's CEO, commented: "There is no job in the world that offers the amount of paid holidays that a parent would need to cover all school holidays” (July, 2025).
In the U.S. the average Paid Time Off policy looks 11 days on average a year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is of course an average as there are no federal mandates for PTO. The Pew Research Center cited that Kindergarten through 12th grade Public Schools will be closed an average of 180 days in a year on average. Even doing the most basic of math equations anyone can see the disparity between an employee’s average vacation days and the amount of time a child K-12 will be out of school. Still there is no federal safety net for working parents or caregivers or employer mandated assistance.
Some proposed solutions have looked like:
Remote work/ flex work (these are distinctly different, while remote work may happen outside of an office building and inside of a home it typically runs on an inflexible work day or scheduled hours such as 9-5)
Employers providing childcare vouchers
Leveraging Federal Funds: Utilizing funds from federal initiatives or even increasing Subsidies and Tax Credits. Along the lines of Federally supported Summer Childcare there is an obvious need for Publicly Funded Summer Programs. But since the U.S. still does not have a federally mandated or protected paid maternity leave or offer universal pre-k it seems that we are unfortunately a long ways off from being able to make this progress.
Critics of government support for the Summer Childcare crisis will say “but you chose to have kids, why should my tax dollars pay for your Summer Childcare?” Basic human decency is not seen as a reliable reason, so we look at the facts. Even those who chose not to have children may at any point in their life find themselves to be a caregiver, maybe to a relative,to aging elderly parents, or to a spouse, etc.
According to NEEBC, Approximately 61% to 73% of the U.S. workforce has some form of current caregiving responsibility for children or aging relatives, making it the fastest-growing employee demographic. One could argue that federally funding the gap for Summer childcare or requiring employers to accommodate the growing caregiving needs of the labor force with flex work options or childcare vouchers will soon be the “cost of doing business” if they want to retain top talent or any employees for that matter.
Some parents are leaning on grandparents for Summer Childcare (not sustainable as many of our parents' generation are still working and employed themselves, and many family members are not in contact or even geographically available to help with childcare). Some working moms create “cohorts” to split up costs for nanny’s/ babysitters or even taking turns with morning drop-offs and afternoon pickups. Again, this is a village or community that many don’t even have the option of using because they don’t have it. So instead, most parents are hanging by a thread, crossing their fingers, and holding on for dear life.
If you're privileged enough to work from home — or work remotely — you're probably spending an arm and a leg on groceries and kids’ snacks: chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, yogurt, Goldfish, apples, and carrots.
You’re optimistically making chore charts and summer reading lists while your kids blare Disney+ or Netflix from the living room, jump off the couch in the background of your Zoom calls, and you try not to pull your hair out for the next three months — reminding yourself that you’re one of the “lucky” ones.
Lucky meaning you have the option to not “require” Summer childcare in the way as your colleagues who commute to work even though your mental sanity hangs precariously in the balance.
This is of course all while social media and society remind us that we only have “18 summers” with our kids and to give our kids a “90’s Summer” even though the one employed parent household has been replaced with dual income households because it takes two employed adults to barely scrape by due to the cost of living crisis and wages that have not caught up and instead been stagnated for decades.
We will be joining Facebook groups, Substack chats, and asking the other bewildered mothers and parents how they are surviving. We'll share links for bubbles, chalk, waterballoons and other items to keep our kids busy and reduce their screentime. We’ll try to cobble together the summertime magic in the margins of life outside of our 9-5’s and 40-hour work weeks. We’ll go to the pool after an hour shift and rise early on Saturday mornings to go to the park or splashpad.
When it comes to Summer Childcare most working mothers and caregivers are doing their best to survive as individuals in a system that was not designed to support them or even acknowledge their existence and has instead asked them to survive and sacrifice their mental, emotional, and often physical wellbeing to continue functioning in an outdated work system. Society will applaud us for being “Super Moms!” instead of offering support so we don’t have to be. I hope a future exists in which our Government and Employers are required to acknowledge and support the diverse needs of the workforce. For now I hope we continue to discuss these struggles and share our stories because they matter.
By Hannah Lacy
Bio: Hannah Lacy is a digital content strategist with over seven years of experience in marketing and social media, and more than a decade of experience as a freelance writer contributing to various publications. A working mother of two school-aged children, she writes at the intersection of ambition and parenthood, with a passion for storytelling, advocating for working moms, and partnering with mission-driven brands and organizations.
Connect with her on LinkedIn or at hannahlacymedia@gmail.com.
