Is It OK for Your Kids to ‘Rot’ all Summer?

When Katherine Goldstein was a child in the 1990s, growing up in Atlanta, she remembers languid summers spent swimming and riding her bike around the neighborhood while her father worked full time and her mother worked part time from home. Many of the millennial parents in her orbit have similar memories.

“Most of the people I know who are in their 30s and 40s spent July and August at a community pool, and there was not this sense that every moment had to be programmed,” said Ms. Goldstein, 41.

Ms. Goldstein, a researcher who lives with her husband and three children in Durham, N.C., also went to camp some years. But it seems a stark contrast to the annual frenzy many families these days enter as early as the fall, when summer is still several months away but the pressure to plan those school-free months reaches a peak.

While many parents — particularly those with office jobs — may view camp as the ideal and often necessary way for a child to spend summer break, others see it as a dreaded four-letter word that is synonymous with hefty price tags and stressful logistics.

What if, some are daring to wonder, my kid does nothing?

Call it kid rotting, internet parlance for indulgent lounging, or “wild summer.” This might sound anathema to those who subscribe to an ultracompetitive modern parenting culture, particularly in New York City, where signing up for camp is an arms race of who can remember to set calendar reminders months ahead of time. Some of the most coveted camps — like the ones offered by Central Park Zoo ($720 per week) and the American Museum of Natural History ($1,300 per week) — often fill up within minutes of opening registration.

In some affluent suburbs, the cost of multiple camp tuitions is on par with a new luxury car. Hali Berman, the founder of the resale site for camp gear and décor called Recamped, is spending about $40,000 to send her two younger children to attend eight weeks of full-day camp in Bergen County, N.J., and for seven weeks of sleep-away camp for her oldest child.