‘Feral Kid Summers’ are Trending (Just Not for Working Parents)

The idea of a tech-free, unstructured and slightly “feral” summer for children may be trending, but as a kid who grew up in the 90s, I never thought I’d romanticize the idea. That was my childhood, after all. In fact, I still have the journals I kept just to record the blissful lack of structure inherent to my freewheeling days. Camp? Nah, I didn’t need it. My mom was home to lightly supervise, which meant I could wake up and holler through the trees to invite my next-door-neighbor, Katie, over to play; ride my bike to the neighborhood store simply to secure a popsicle; basically, see where each summer day decided to take me. Life was grand.

And for many vocal parents today, it still is. Kylie Kelce is channeling it. Mainstream media brands ranging from National Geographic to The Cut are advocating for it. What began to bubble up in 2025 as a wistful antidote to The Anxious Generation feels even more mainstream going into summer 2026.

But the ‘feral kid summers’ of both the 90s and today have something my modern self simply can’t replicate: A stay-at-home parent.

Don’t get me wrong. My mom worked quite a bit when I was very little, as a project manager for an educational book publisher. But by the time my sister was born, she was largely freelancing and able to make her own schedule. This might be nostalgia talking, but the resulting gift was summertime magic. She took us to the town beach. She helped us execute our lemonade stand. She always had time to pick us up if we called from a pay phone to tell her we rode our bikes too far.

As a full-time working mom of two, however, I have to wonder if that magic will ever be mine to give.

Instead, by necessity, the minute the clock strikes January, I’ve already plotted my kids’ summer camp lineup, plunking down deposits—to the tune of thousands of dollars—all so I can wake up and rush them out the door and start my workday. After all, a feral kid summer may be spontaneous and carefree, but if your kids are under the age of 10, it still requires some supervision.

Could it be that all the time I sink into optimizing and cruise directing is more for me than it is for them? A way to soothe the guilt that that my kids’ summers can’t look like mine? Probably.

But it’s also that this idyllic, feral summer feels decidedly outside my grasp. These days, screens are plentiful, safety expectations have intensified and even our neighborhoods are less community-based. (Every playdate my kids have ever had was carefully orchestrated by me, not organized on the fly at the basketball hoop.) In fact, according to Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of the aforementioned  Anxious Generation, this decline in childhood freedom has been in effect for over 40 years, with stranger danger taking over and parents keeping closer tabs on kids and ultimately embracing more structure and dependence.

This also coincides with the rise of organized summer programming. In 2024, 30 million K through 12 kids were in camp, according to the National Camp Association. This compares to about 4 million in the 1950s when, in fairness, camp options were much more limited—but mothers also more likely to be home and available.

That’s not to say that there aren’t benefits to camp routines—to meeting new people, trying new experiences and developing ways to cope without one’s parents (a crucial skill according to research.)

But the fact remains that kids are overscheduled and it would be nice to afford them the freedom of wading through a creek or chasing lightening bugs in the backyard. And yet…the pressure on working parents to cover 9 to 5 blocks makes this impossible,

That said, I’m determined to find moments of down time, to make my 8-year-old go outside with nothing but a piece of chalk and a buddy. Can I offer popsicles before dinner? Plot a camp skip day where we go to the beach? I hope my kids get lost, and I hope they get dirty.

But I also know that even an unstructured childhood now requires extreme adult planning. Being carefree? That’s a luxury we working moms simply don’t have time for.