Half of Parenting is Just Signing Up
The battle royale to enroll a toddler in literally anything
The Groupchat has been vexed lately by something known as “camp signups.”
I didn’t know what camp signups were until I learned how they consumed my friends with slightly older children than mine. It sounds slightly less stressful than attempting to purchase Taylor Swift tickets.
I didn’t know that this was another thing I’d have to do as a modern parent. I never witnessed my parents rising at the break of dawn to log on the second that camp enrollment opened, in the hopes that they’d beat out the hundreds or thousands of other parents in the area who were also hoping to sign their children up for the same camps. But that’s because our circumstances didn’t leave my parents scrambling for some place to put us once school adjourned. My mom was a teacher which theoretically meant that her schedule was more open in the summer, my local elementary school offered half-day summer school that gave us kids the chance to take classes like astronomy, gymnastics, and woodworking, and my grandparents lived less than a mile from us and could watch us in the afternoons. Plus, I remember a lot of unsupervised outdoor time back then. I don’t think kids are set free into the outdoors like that now.
Regardless, I now need to add “find out where camps are” and “learn how to sign up for them” to my list of things to figure out. I hate this shit. I am not a years-in-advance planner. I get irritated if my husband asks what we’re having for dinner before noon.
Half of parenting in a country with a shitty care infrastructure is figuring out who is going to look after the kids while the parents are out earning money so that the kids can eat, and competing with other parents for those limited resources. For well-resourced couples, that competition extends to non-essential but still important things like preschool soccer leagues and Mommy & Me music classes.