Can We Please Change the “Over-Scheduled Kids” Conversation?
It's not about cultivating winners or jumping class status
Welcome to Mess & Noise. Last time, I reported on the spiritual awakening I had after a colonoscopy, and before that I reviewed two sandwiches. Today is about the economic fuckery of being a middle-class parent in New York City.
I recently published a non-expert, non-medical guide to Perimenopause, and I’m dropping a new book about disagreeing at work later this month. With a paid subscription you get all my books, some swag, and tons of influence and power.
Having kids in New York is like being an independent filmmaker. It makes no sense if you don’t have rich parents.
When I became pregnant with my first in 2018, I had just left a full-time job to go freelance.
I got health insurance through my partner’s employer, and we figured my flexible schedule was perfect for taking care of a baby half the day, and bringing in money during the other half. We failed to get ourselves on one of the 1+ year waiting lists for daycare, so hiring a part-time nanny was our best option.
We soon learned that affording part-time care for a baby in Cobble Hill required both of us to work full time. Especially if we wanted to maintain the rest of our (small and non-flashy) lives without gutting our savings accounts.
Fast forward to an accidental sweet surprise second child and a global pandemic, and a flywheel of earning to pay for the child care that needs to happen while we’re earning.
“Buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car,” from a Metric song, stuck in my head forever.
But the financial burden of childcare lessens once they’re in school, right?
Lol, no. We thought (hoped) so, but the money you once paid for childcare when they’re little simply gets redirected to all the new things they do outside school hours, and the cost creeps up exponentially.
This is where I get particularly pissy because I’ve read multiple newsletters, heard one podcast, and saw half-a-dozen parenting influencers over the past two weeks telling parents to lay off the extra-curricular activities for kids, without considering the following:
We’re working. Parents with full-time jobs generally work from 9-to-6. Could be more, depending on the role and industry, or how many jobs a parent has. School ends at 2 or 3pm, so something needs to step in for those hours. (Don’t even get me started on winter, midwinter, spring, and summer breaks.)
Nuclear families are often isolated from extended family, so aside from afterschool activities being a necessity for working families, weekend activities are a rare opportunity to be around other families.
Lots of families, at least in NY, live in small apartments without backyards, and/or neighborhoods without tons of parks or free family-friendly events. This makes paying for built-in weekend activities like gymnastics and jiu jitsu the logical alternative to sitting around at home.
The anti-schedule parenting punditry I keep reading/hearing/seeing is based on two things:
Giving kids too much to do outside of school increases anxiety and robs them of their capacity to entertain themselves with independent play.
“Forcing” kids into activities like chess or tennis with hopes it will shape them into an ideal candidate for an elite university in the future puts unfair pressure on them, so parents need to let go of their class anxiety.
I’ll admit there’s a tiny bit of class anxiety behind seeking “enrichment” for my kids, but I have no delulus about getting them into Harvard. My upbringing was very Gen-X, very neglectful, so I merely want them to develop a genuine interest or two, so they don’t turn into TV-addicted-slacker-nihilists ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Because of those same factors, I don’t freak out and make them anxious if we’re late for robotics or whatever, because who cares, it’s just a robotics class, we’ll all be dust one day, etc.
If we lived in the woods or the compound of a religious cult, independent play and free-range parenting would be a no-brainer. But when you live on top of each other in a city, where the great outdoors or “risky play” involves cars blowing through red lights, bad weather, and the occasional pants-free person screaming on the corner, it’s just a no.
The big family gap
I used to visit my grandma (Nanni 🇮🇹) in Brooklyn after my dad and I moved to California for his job, which separated us from an extended unit of aunts, uncles, and first-and-second cousins.
During those summers, my younger cousins were sometimes dropped at Nanni’s apartment while their moms and dads went to work. By that time, Nanni was a retired seamstress who supported herself and her mother (Nonna-Nonna 🇮🇹) on a union pension. She had the bandwidth to babysit for her nieces and nephews’ kids, and they’d return the favor with groceries, helping her clean up, and taking me to their places to give her a break.
Those working moms and dads also had their pensioner parents and aunts and uncles in the same neighborhood, so no one was overstretched or imposed upon. The work of childcare was evenly distributed across families.
This “village” was probably an anomaly when I witnessed it in late 1980s. Extended families started atomizing during the post-war suburbanization of the 50s and 60s, which sequestered nuclear families and put the village-sized responsibility of raising kids squarely on the shoulders of mothers/housewives.
For clues on how well this works out, we can look at Betty Draper, Betty Friedan, “Mother’s Little Helper” (Diazepam) and Karens.
J.D. Vance thinks grandparents are a viable replacement or supplement to childcare, forgetting that 45% of Americans don’t live near extended family, and about 4 in 10 grandparents are still in the workforce, i.e., not comfortably retired and ready to babysit. And what about those who aren’t healthy enough to run after toddlers? (Both of my parents were famously cremated before I had kids, so they’ve been absolutely no help with their grandchildren.)
Unfettered capitalism has isolated families, privatized everything, and monetized every aspect of our lives. Private equity is squeezing the shit out of childcare in particular.
And it’s not just families who’ve been divided and monetized. Tech platforms have inserted themselves in our friendships too. Here’s what happened when I was discussing an important Twilight meme (thank you, Marisa) with a friend:
Some apps even want you to pay your friends for their blog posts.
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Huge hyper-capitalist thanks to D’arcy H. and MLC for upgrading to paid subscriptions. That’s 9 minutes of a Ditmas Park dance class each month. I also want to welcome Nazy F., Lynette M., and David M. as new subscribers.
📢 Other important shoutouts 📢
Just in time for a post about the untenable-ness of modern parenting, my friend Kathryn Meany is launching a new support group for local moms. Check out her flyer below and email her for details.
I’m also the happy recipient of one of Lindsay Pope’s amazing Pro-Roe designs. I got the vintage blue sweatshirt in the Gucci motif (see below) and you can get your own here. Lindsay donates a portion to Kansas Abortion Fund.
That’s it for this edition. I have some belated hot takes on Founder Mode, the debate, and Kamala’s brand strategy that I’ll try to get out before the weekend. If not, I’ll see you back here soon!