The '18 Summers' Parenting Trend Ruins Summer by Over-Formalizing It
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/emmabrockes. "Should I try the ‘18 summers’ parenting trend? Only if I want to ruin the school holidays | Emma Brockes | The Guardian." August 6, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
Emma Brockes argues that the '18 summers' trend, which encourages parents to countdown and treasure each remaining summer with their kids, actually ruins summer by turning it into an anxious, scheduled performance instead of a relaxed, unstructured time. She says the real value of summer comes from doing nothing in particular, and that this trend is just another example of parents over-controlling and overthinking childhood.
Conclusion
The '18 summers' parenting trend is misguided and should be rejected because it corrupts the natural, unstructured value of school holidays by turning them into an anxious, performative project.
Premises
- The core value of summer holidays lies in unstructured, unscheduled time free from obligation or accountability.
- The '18 summers' trend imposes anxiety and a sense of loss/scarcity onto summer by counting down remaining childhood summers, which is a 'banality' that is particularly untrue given how long summer holidays actually feel.
- The trend commodifies parenting by encouraging consumption of diaries, binders, and other products meant to document 'memories,' which undermines actually experiencing those moments.
- Social media trends like this create feelings of inadequacy by comparing ordinary family life to curated, idealized images (comparable to advertisements).
- The broader impulse to formalize and schedule every human experience ('making memories,' 'experiencing joy') as a task list is itself a 'creepy' distortion of natural life.
- This trend is part of a pattern of parental overreach and controlling behavior (exemplified by 'back-seat climbing'), which normalizes excessive parental control over children's autonomous experiences.
- The author's personal experience shows that embracing unstructured boredom during summer, without overthinking or scheduling, is what makes the season enjoyable.
Assumptions
- Unstructured time is inherently more valuable for children and families than structured, intentional 'memory-making' activities.
- Awareness of time's scarcity (i.e., dwelling on the finite number of childhood summers) necessarily produces anxiety rather than gratitude or motivation.
- Social media trends generally have a negative, rather than potentially helpful or neutral, influence on parenting behavior.
- Documenting or intentionally trying to create memories is incompatible with genuinely enjoying an experience.
- The commercialization of a concept (via products like diaries and binders) is evidence that the concept itself is flawed or inauthentic.
- Nostalgic memories of one's own unsupervised childhood are representative of how childhood was actually experienced by most people (versus being romanticized selectively).