One in three millennial parents of school-aged children said they won’t have a single anxiety-free day this summer, a recent poll shows.DARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
I had barely given birth to my first daughter when, on one of my first walks with her in the early days of summer, a neighbour stopped me to give me a piece of unsolicited advice: You only get 18 summers with your kids; you have to make them count. It’s all so fleeting!
It was the first time I had heard this – but it wouldn’t be the last. The phrase has become commonplace, and it springs to mind whenever the good weather hits, along with the psychological burden it implies: Are we making the most of these precious days? Are our kids getting the very best summer, in all of its ephemeral glory? I always make a summer bucket list in late June, and look back with regret in September.
Moms are under pressure to give our kids special summers and make all the memories – and lately, that pressure has been upped. There’s a sudden nostalgic urge all over social media that we give our kids nineties summers, the kind that millennials experienced, in all of their unplanned, unplugged beauty. Drinking out of a garden hose, biking around aimlessly with friends, getting dirt under the fingernails.
In my case, my ninties summers were a blur of making friendship bracelets and mastering my Skip It in the driveway until the counter broke. I remember days spent in my best friend’s pool and going to karate camp and half-days of swimming lessons. Strange creations in Easy-Bake ovens and going for ice cream with my grandpa. I remember watching Titanic eight times. (The screen time!)
Kids spending weeks of care-free, do-nothingness was recently advocated for in a New York Times piece that explored “rotting” all summer – which is 2025-speak for forgoing structured options such as day camps and adult-planned activities.
And while it’s true that many camps are too expensive or inaccessible for families, the “feral summer” is also a privileged one. It assumes someone, probably a mom, is home to supervise that faux freedom.
According to a recent poll in the U.S., millennial parents of school-aged kids are exceedingly stressed about summer: One in three say they won’t have a single anxiety-free day this summer.
Among parents I know, a common source of stress in the summer revolves around how much screen time kids are having. But experts say even screen time has nuance.
“Not all screens are created equal,” said Emma Duerden, an associate professor in the faculty of education at Western University, who studies how children’s brains are affected by different kinds of screen activity.
She says parents should keep in mind the recommendations from the Canadian Paediatric Society ‐ no more than one hour of screen time a day for kids aged 2 to 5. But she emphasizes that screens are realistically going to be part of summer. In her research, Duerden has found screen viewing that involves interactivity (think an educational game or a video call with a family member) and co-viewing with parents are much better – and can be incorporated into summer routines.
There is not simply one right way to create an amazing summer for our kids, and clinging to a single vision – ninties summers good, 2025 summers bad – flattens the reality most parents live in. There will be boring days. There will be overbooked weekends. Someone will get sunscreen in their eye and some long weekends will feel like a waste.
That’s more than okay, says Erica Djossa, a registered psychotherapist in Courtice, Ont., and founder of Momwell, a maternal mental health platform.
“We are living in what the experts call the ‘intensive mothering era,’ and social media contributes a lot to this,” she said. Djossa explained that there is a societal belief in Western culture that mothers need to be martyrs, sacrificing themselves for the betterment of our kids. “That we need to do and be everything to everyone, and it’s just not sustainable.”
She says this era has created a “perfect storm” for a maternal mental health crisis. “Moms are feeling burned out, trying to do all the things. We want to make memories for our kids – I actually enjoy it – but we don’t want to feel like we have to, like we don’t have a choice.”
According to Djossa, we can choose the “path of ease” in the high-pressure moments to make summer special for our kids, and it needn’t be labour- or cost-intensive. Djossa herself takes two weeks off work for summer magic – filled with low-intensity trips to a nearby beach where the kids “live off chips and Sunny D,” and then the kids resume summer camp and she resumes her job.
On the Friday of a recent long weekend, no summer magic was in sight at my house. While seemingly every mom on my Instagram feed was either touring Europe with their family or jumping off a dock with their children, mine were enjoying Would You Rather, a quiz-exercise show on YouTube, while I stood in front of the fridge questioning what to make for dinner.
Before I could blink, my daughters were planning a picnic in our front yard. Suddenly, Elsa costumes were donned and umbrellas were retrieved (for reasons still unclear to me).
They brought out beans, chips, blueberries and granola bars and dinner was served. It was not an Instagram-worthy meal, but it was weird, hilarious and joyful.
We might only get 18 summers with our kids, but maybe they don’t have to be all-consuming and magical. They just have to be theirs.
