Parents are pressured to give kids an '80s summer. Are we wearing nostalgia blinders?

CBC

8 hours ago

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Call it what you will: '80s kid summer, feral kid summer, old-fashioned kid summer or kid-rotting.
However you label it, the internet is rife with posts waxing nostalgic for the unscheduled summers of decades past, when kids spent their days roaming free on bikes, living off Popsicles and figuring out what to do all on their own.
"There are only so many childhood summers," warn some articles, as others admonishingly tell parents that boredom creates autonomy and creativity, and remind us that kids deserve unstructured downtime like everyone else.
But all these posts can make modern parents feel guilty. They also ignore the reality that in most dual-income or single-parent families, structured child care is necessary.
There's also the assumption — and it's not even subtle — that the parent providing the carefree summer in question is the mother, said Allison Venditti, a Toronto-based human resources expert and founder of Moms at Work, an advocacy group for working mothers.
"What none of this addresses ... is it requires mental load and planning from women," Venditti told CBC News. "It's the same idea as the magic of Christmas. It isn't magic — it's mothers."
Decades ago, this may have looked like the mother staying home with the children and keeping the fridge stocked, co-ordinating with a neighbour to help check in, or letting their children stay home unsupervised simply because they lacked other options.
Of course, everyone wants to do the best they can for their kids, Venditti says. But between the rising cost of living and most parents working or looking for work, a carefree summer at home is rarely feasible these days, she added.
"Way to make people feel even worse. It's like, 'Oh, you can't pay your mortgage and you can't spend the summer letting your child be free?' That's heavy for people."
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A lot has changed since the 1980s. There are iPads, every kid has a water bottle at all times and penny candy will cost you a lot more. (Some Canadian kids may have never even seen a penny.)
But one of the biggest differences is the number of mothers in the workforce and child-care options.
The employment rate for Canadian mothers has nearly doubled since 1976, when 40.5 per cent of mothers worked, compared to 2023, when it climbed to 79.8 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. During the same time period, the employment rate for fathers was almost completely unchanged.
Employment rates for moms did start climbing in the '80s, but were still far lower than today. And even as more mothers entered the workforce, there were few formal child-care options, says a publication by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP).
In 1986, there were fewer than 200,000 licensed centre-based child-care spaces across the country, noted the IRPP, compared to seven times that in 2019. And in 1981, the majority of child care was provided by family, extended family, or paid neighbours and non-relatives.
Along with dual-income families, the number of working, single mothers has increased, as well, notes the Vanier Institute of the Family in a recent report. All told, these trends have "increased the need for non-parental child-care options," the report says. In 2023, it says, just over half of children under age six were in some form of non-parental child care.
In 2022, 40 per cent of Canadian schoolchildren aged four to 12 participated in some form of before- or after-school care, according to Statistics Canada.
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Romanticizing boredom
Earlier this month, a new term started trending online: kid rotting.
The Guardian defines it as "a 2025 way of describing letting your kids do nothing in the summer holidays," and the New York Times calls it "internet parlance for indulgent lounging."
"What if, some are daring to wonder, my kid does nothing?" notes the June 8 New York Times article.
But as some parents bemoan that now they have to plan their kids' perfect unplanned summer, others online are pointing out that even being able to ponder the option is a privilege.
"Working parents don't get to choose between enrichment or free-range boredom. They're juggling jobs and patch-working together child care so their kids are safe, cared for and maybe even — gasp — having fun," wrote U.S. parenting account "Team Camperoni" on TikTok earlier in June.
Bryce Reddy, a U.S. therapist and mom of three, wrote on Instagram last month that slow summers sound lovely, but the reality is most parents don't have nine weeks of paid time off to sustain them.
"If your summer looks more like 'drop-off, pickup, repeat' than backyard picnics and leisurely 'yes' days, you're not alone," Reddy wrote. "You're doing what you need to do to keep your kids happy, safe, and cared for while you work and that's pretty great."
Nostalgia blinders
Venditti, the founder of Moms at Work, says she suspects many people have nostalgia blinders on. A lot of the time, '80s summers were about survival, she noted, with parents just trying to keep their kids occupied and safe however they could, with fewer options than today.
It also wasn't always ideal, she added, with perhaps a neighbour at the ready with Band-Aids or an older relative telling you to fend for yourself during The Young and the Restless. In 1976, the U.S. Department of Commerce estimated that 13 per cent of its country's children between seven and 13 went without adult supervision before or after school.
By the mid-'80s, a wave of research and articles focused on so-called latchkey kids and fears about them developing anxiety, depression or getting into risky behaviours. "Latchkey children face potentially disastrous consequences from being left alone," warned the Washington Post in 1985.
From the '60s through to the '90s, it was common for evening newscasts to end with a PSA for parents: "It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?"
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Today, in Canada, most provinces and territories don't set a minimum age to allow a child to be left home alone, but social services typically advise that no child under age 12 be left home unsupervised, according to 2021 research.
Parents have been arrested for letting kids walk alone, and have had child welfare services called for letting their children play unsupervised in their own backyards.
"Every mother should scream, 'What do you want from us?'" said Venditti.
"You do it this way, it's bad. You do it the other way, it's bad.... The expectations are through the roof."