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Strollerderby
Stressed Out Moms Say No to Volunteer Work at School
Did you bake instead of making dinner?
For some moms, volunteering at a child’s school is a gimme. Your kid goes to a school, your going to organize the school’s book fair, or Winterfest, or Spring Fling. But in these days when school budgets are tight, time is short and demands are high, more moms are saying no to school volunteering.
This isn’t to say all moms are deciding to scale back. But many are and volunteer work can take the time a mother needs for work that generates income. Schools, meanwhile, have less money and so need more help from parent volunteers. Or, differently put, there are a lot of volunteering opportunities at most schools, opportunities moms are starting to pass up.
Writing in The New York Times, Hilary Stout gives example after example of moms (it’s always moms) who have been hiring babysitters and popping in frozen meals in order to meet the demands of their volunteer school commitments. This volunteering isn’t the same as getting involved with your child’s schoolwork. In fact, the kind of volunteering she’s writing about might get in the way of it. You can’t help your child with homework if your at school organizing a bake sale.
Granted, a lot of the moms interviewed for Stout’s articles are the super-volunteers, the one who do it all and then some. One mom, Sarah Auerswald, calculated that she’d spent about 1,000 hours last ten years at her sons’ school. (Corrected 12/3) She told Stout,
“My kids got really resentful.” When she would leave them with yet another baby sitter, or drag them along for yet another Saturday Clean-up Day at school, they implored, “Why is it always you who has to do everything, Mom?”
If everyone, or at least more parents, volunteered a smaller but more equal number of hours, things would be easier for everyone. Some schools are requiring that parents volunteer 30 hours in a given school year. I don’t think that’s a bad idea. By asking parents to commit a set number of hours, schools make their expectations and needs clear and parents get automatic limits within which they can make choices.
My kids go to two different schools and I volunteer at both, but I definitely keep my activities in check (even if I am a class parent for both classes).
How about you? Do you volunteer at your child’s school? How many hours is too many and do you think volunteering should be required?
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0 Comments
Ri-chan commented on Dec 02 10 at 3:01 pmits not really volunteering if its required is it?
IndigoSabrian commented on Dec 02 10 at 3:54 pmYou’ve got “your” instead of “you’re” in the first paragraph.
Angela commented on Dec 02 10 at 5:56 pmMy son isn’t school age yet but I’ve heard other moms around here complain that they would like to be able to do more for their kid’s school but they can’t because the schools only want volunteers for hours that they are needing to work. Many of them are single moms and already under pressure at work for the time they need to take off for sick days, doctor appointments and other necessary things that they really can’t manage anything else.
Sarah Auerswald commented on Dec 03 10 at 8:28 amThanks for the mention! I just wanted to make a tiny correction to the post above – I said I attended 1000 meetings in the past 10 years, putting me well over 1000 hours at my kids’ school.
And to Ri-chan – it’s still “volunteering” if it’s unpaid, in my opinion, required or not.
goddess commented on Dec 03 10 at 10:02 amMandatory volunterism? An oxymoron if I ever heard one. I do what I can, but the day they start requiring is the day they start paying me for those hours. And yes, if they can’t volunteer during their free hours, you mean to tell me Moms are supposed to take a monetary hit AND place themselves in line for disciplinary measures at work?
Robin Aronson commented on Dec 03 10 at 10:33 amNo, if volunteering were required,a mom or dad or uncle or friend, could contribute to the hours. There are often weekend events that need parent support. The idea I was mulling over here was how to get a more equal distribution of volunteer activities and wider participation. “Requirement” probably overstates my position.
jrmiss86 commented on Dec 04 10 at 6:26 amMy son’s school won’t let me bring my younger daughter with me to volunteer. So what am I supposed to do with her? All my babysitters are also in school, or working. I can’t stand that so many schools complain about how the parents are not volunteering, but they make is so hard for the parents to do so.
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