Boys Need a Summer Challenge
A summer job was once a rite of passage for teens hired to staff local restaurants, stores, and pools. But today the percentage of 16-19-year-olds now working summer jobs is at or near the lowest levels since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking this data just after War World II.
Today, about one in three 16-19-year-olds have summer jobs. As there are about 17 million high school age students in the U.S., this means that more 11 million currently don’t have a summer job.
About half of these teens participate in some type of summer camp, according to Gallup, but many of these camps are day camps that only last one week (baseball camps, soccer camps, band camps, and so on). Also, the “gap in participation rates between upper- and lower-income families is nearly 30 percentage points, 67% versus 38%,” determined Gallup.
What this means is millions of teens are at home—or hanging out somewhere—likely playing video games and scrolling through social media all day and night. The percentage goes up in the poorer neighborhoods—places where they are much more likely be in fatherless homes.
Free play is a critical part of social and personal development, but a summer of nothing but screen time can lead teens into who knows what online and in their neighborhoods!
Also, when parents later complain that their kids were indoctrinated by teachers and professors with political ideologies or values the parents do not share, I ask what challenges they gave their kids, as positively learning or overcoming real things builds a foundation of conservative values that later help them critically evaluate impractical ideologies (such as socialism).
Summer jobs, of course, can do this. A teen with a job has to show up on time, to be in the proper attire, to speak clearly, to treat customers respectably (even when the customers are rude), and much more. But what these jobs can teach is limited.
A good parent adds challenges—this is where it gets interesting, individualistic, and difficult.
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