For anyone who feels that the six week summer holiday is too long…

[Forgottenmyphone]

consider yourself lucky and thank your lucky stars you don’t live in Italy!

That sounds like a nice arrangement. But some of those parents were at home, not working, and that's why it worked. School days and school holidays were designed around there being one parent who works less or not at all, so extending the holidays (while I agree sounds idyllic for the kids and teachers) in 2024 would further disadvantage working parents and leave more families living in poverty to struggle.

When my kids were little they went to summer camps for 3 or 4 weeks. A lot of these in Italy are run by churches and rely on volunteers to keep costs down. There are a lot of expensive residential camps too. I don't work July and August so that helps a lot!

Well they arranged that someone would be around, I think most worked st least part of the time, the SAHM has been a very middle class thing for most of history, not many women didn't work at all when I was growing up.

But what do countries that have very long holidays do?

as an Irish person I can’t imagine having had only 4-6 weeks of summer hols as some others are saying on here 🙉

I loved our long holidays, 3 months secondary school break was barely enough for me!

I didn't leave much later than that, neither did my sister, and we didn't ever go back in September.

Parents have longer holidays too. Many businesses close for the entire August

Also family structure is different. Lots of family members living close by and grandparents play very important roles

In Spain they don't. Standard is a month's leave for the entire year. Kids are off for 13 weeks in the summer, a week at Easter and two at Christmas. So kids go to summer clubs (usually heavily subsidised). Grandparents are often around too. But it is very set up for having one parent at home (which is very very rarely the case in Spain) or having gps for childcare.

How do you manage it. Do they go to summer camps or long holidays? How on earth do people get the time off work…

Schools will be out on 4 June where I live (US), and back again around 21 August - about 10-11 weeks.

It's great for teens, who can get a summer job babysitting or working for a business.

Many families employ teens aged 13-14-15-and up to take care of school-age kids.

One of my DDs has a friend whose mother sent her to family in Alabama for the summer. Another friend has grandparents who have a summer house in Wisconsin and sent their kids there.

There are also summer camps, both locally (park district, YMCA, and various daily sport / art/ drama/ music camps) and sleepover camps. Obv it's nice to be able to afford all these options, but many organisations do sliding scale fees.

Me too.

We used to feel so sorry for our English cousins, slaving away at school through the best bit of the summer and only getting out when the days were already beginning to get shorter and the weather starting to turn.

So true.

This is the way it is in the area of the US where I live.

People on MN are horrified at the idea of a 13 or 14 year old babysitting or schlepping kids to a public swimming pool, but it's how they learn responsibility and realise how hard they have to work for their $20 an hour - so (1) they learn to spend it wisely, and (2) set their sights on higher paying jobs for themselves in the future, that don't involve dealing with other humans' poop or snot.

I'm in Italy and it's generally a mix of summer camps, grandparents and helping out other families and vice versa. Where I live a lot of the churches run day camps and kids already go there for catechism (which lasts for years!) so they have friends that go too. There are also sports camps, English language camps, art camps etc(which are often lovely but very expensive). When my kids were little they went to church camps and scouts. Now they are teenagers they refuse to do any camps so they'll be annoying each other at home or hanging round McDonald's 🙄.

I think the fact that under-16s legally cannot be deemed responsible for harming a child in their care and the parents can be prosecuted for child neglect if they leave their child with an under-16 and the child gets hurt might also have something to do with Brits' reluctance to hire children as babysitters.

If your child drowned in the pool, that would be devastating as-is, without also being charged with neglect because you left that child with a teen.

@mathanxiety most of my knowledge of American babysitting does come from reading The Babysitter's Club and other teen novels which were written back in the 1980s so I often have wondered if 14 year olds were still being employed as a mother's helper/babysitter, or working as a camp "councillor" (is that the correct name?) or running an ice cream stand at the Mall.
Although it's perfectly legal to employ 16 year olds in the UK many companies won't even do that anymore because there's too many rules and regulations.

Long summer holidays are wonderful for children with a stay at home parent or for those whose parents can afford (and are willing) to take them on holiday, have fun days out and/or pay for interesting and good quality holiday clubs and other experiences.

They are awful for children from chaotic families for whom school may be the only source of care and stability.

I'm fairly sure there is evidence that many children go backwards over the summer in terms of their reading and maths. A shorter summer break would help with that.

@Fifthtimelucky there could also be the opinion that the stop/start nature of having a school holiday every 6 weeks could affect some children.
That's just an idea.....no idea if there's any truth in it.

Yes of course.

I think the issue is that children (and their parents) have different needs and preferences. The best system for some will not suit others.

@Fifthtimelucky that's so very true.
Whatever system we have will never work for everyone.

Working at the mall or as a camp counselor (daycare or sleepover) would be a job for kids aged 16 and up.

Babysitting is more for younger teens, though many older teens do it. The cutoff often happens around 16 when teens learn to drive and can get themselves to and from a job that's 'on the books'.

It's great for teens to have references available when they're looking for a campus job when they leave for university, and it gives them a lot of confidence.

@mathanxiety so The Babysitter's Club lifestyle is still accurate then?
I remember one of my favourite BSC books was one where 2 of the girls are employed by Mallory's parents to basically look after all the kids while on a seaside holiday.
So the two girls (aged about 14) plus Mallory (age about 12) being incharge of Mallory's huge amount of siblings 😂