Did Covid disrupt the parent volunteer pipeline

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s more related to showing up, needing 2 people but expecting 6 and standing around doing nothing for hours because it’s so unorganized.

100% agree. I don’t volunteer if they already have 2 or 3 people. I have no desire to just stand around because you think your activity requires 10. It doesn’t. The organizers are always a mess and way overestimate how many people they need.

This is the real problem but the “well meaning” people just can’t admit it

I've honest to goodness never seen this at both schools I've volunteered in or most sports. The only place I've ever seen it is NVSL. No, FFS we don't need 3 timers on every lane and swim team would be way more enjoyable if they'd go with the volunteer requirements most summer swim leagues have. Don't care if NVSL is the oldest and biggest - tone it down. But everywhere else? I've seen volunteers turned away from class parties rather than being allowed to show up and do nothing.

I’ve literally never shown up to volunteer and there haven’t been too many volunteers.

It happens at out of school Volunteering too.

People organizing volunteering lack the skills to do so.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I learned that nobody appreciated the time I spent doing PTA work (including leadership roles). My kids weren't "cool", so as a family, we weren't valued in the school community. Why should I volunteer to help a community that doesn't value me?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:90% of the child-related volunteer mental/emotional/physical labor is done by moms and the newer generation of moms are not into doing free labor that is being taken for granted and baked in to the school budgets. They no longer need or want that validation.

This is utterly false. 100% of the volunteer coaches for boys sports in my town are men. The vast majority of coaches in girl sports are men. At games and youth tournaments it is relatively rare to see a female coach. Nearly all of the referees in all the sports I am aware of are male. I have never seen a female youth football coach. All of the dads I know are more involved with their kids athletic activities than the moms are.

I think the statement you are making says more about your husband and your marriage than it does about our area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Covid exposed even more inequity but also slowed it all down and allowed people to focus inward and not on their community. I see this in the PTA. We have 40-50 parents who volunteer out of a school of 400 families and most of these parents can just put their kid into a paid activity or go to a fun paid festival on weekends instead of setting up for a festival on school grounds. Free to all students and benefitting all the families that cant volunteer or financially contribute due to multiple jobs, many kids etc. We are all burned out now but not many new families are stepping up.

Can you really blame those people for not wanting to burn themselves out for others who can’t or won’t pitch but want to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor? People felt taken advantage of in these largely thankless roles. There wasn’t much upside for people who would like to enjoy their weekends with their families too.

Based on what I've heard/seen in multiple volunteer run organizations, the upside is when your friends volunteer with you. Then you're hanging out with your friends (and your kids are likely in a pack hanging out also with their friends) and it works. But on the flip side, you may be less likely to invite in other volunteers and people accuse your PTA/leadership team of being cliquey and not friendly so you get fewer volunteers. Catch-22.

This has played more into my decision to not volunteer. If I am showing up and being greeted with a snotty attitude, made to feel "othered" and my efforts dismissed/ignored, why I am going to keep volunteering?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there will be continued ripple effects for a while. For summer swimming, there are fewer swimmers in the 9-12yr old ages because they were 4-7 during lockdown and missed critical years to be on mini/development teams. The current 4th grade is much smaller than normal and the current 3rd grade has more redshirted kids.

There are certain sports and activities that have a 1-3 year window that kids commonly enter the sport. When kids miss those years, it’s only those with motivated parents or a sibling in the activity who join.

The same follows then for traditions if you don’t have one set of volunteers training the next group. No one knows that the junior parents host the spaghetti dinner before senior night if it didn’t happen for 3 years for example.

These are good points. For sports, if you step off the development path for a few years, it's hard to return which may lead to donut holes in some activities . And, if an activity fades out, the parent re-starting it not only has to run it but re-create the original infrastructure, potentially without veteran guidance, which is tough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:90% of the child-related volunteer mental/emotional/physical labor is done by moms and the newer generation of moms are not into doing free labor that is being taken for granted and baked in to the school budgets. They no longer need or want that validation.

This is utterly false. 100% of the volunteer coaches for boys sports in my town are men. The vast majority of coaches in girl sports are men. At games and youth tournaments it is relatively rare to see a female coach. Nearly all of the referees in all the sports I am aware of are male. I have never seen a female youth football coach. All of the dads I know are more involved with their kids athletic activities than the moms are.

I think the statement you are making says more about your husband and your marriage than it does about our area.

to the previous poster, You actually proved her point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I learned that nobody appreciated the time I spent doing PTA work (including leadership roles). My kids weren't "cool", so as a family, we weren't valued in the school community. Why should I volunteer to help a community that doesn't value me?

I agree PTA is a thankless job. But that’s not true for other types of volunteering - I coached a couple of teams for each of my kids and I still get invited to Christmas parties and get Christmas cards from some of my players families

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:90% of the child-related volunteer mental/emotional/physical labor is done by moms and the newer generation of moms are not into doing free labor that is being taken for granted and baked in to the school budgets. They no longer need or want that validation.

+1

Schools should not rely on anyone’s unpaid labor— parents or teachers. The fact that it’s female dominated is one of the reasons teaching is so badly paid and the fact that women’s time is given so little value by schools is why they rely on volunteers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:90% of the child-related volunteer mental/emotional/physical labor is done by moms and the newer generation of moms are not into doing free labor that is being taken for granted and baked in to the school budgets. They no longer need or want that validation.

This is utterly false. 100% of the volunteer coaches for boys sports in my town are men. The vast majority of coaches in girl sports are men. At games and youth tournaments it is relatively rare to see a female coach. Nearly all of the referees in all the sports I am aware of are male. I have never seen a female youth football coach. All of the dads I know are more involved with their kids athletic activities than the moms are.

I think the statement you are making says more about your husband and your marriage than it does about our area.

to the previous poster, You actually proved her point.

Maybe. But I rebutted her premise which which renders her point invalid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:90% of the child-related volunteer mental/emotional/physical labor is done by moms and the newer generation of moms are not into doing free labor that is being taken for granted and baked in to the school budgets. They no longer need or want that validation.

This is utterly false. 100% of the volunteer coaches for boys sports in my town are men. The vast majority of coaches in girl sports are men. At games and youth tournaments it is relatively rare to see a female coach. Nearly all of the referees in all the sports I am aware of are male. I have never seen a female youth football coach. All of the dads I know are more involved with their kids athletic activities than the moms are.

I think the statement you are making says more about your husband and your marriage than it does about our area.

to the previous poster, You actually proved her point.

Plus, athletics involves much more unseen labor than just coaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Covid exposed even more inequity but also slowed it all down and allowed people to focus inward and not on their community. I see this in the PTA. We have 40-50 parents who volunteer out of a school of 400 families and most of these parents can just put their kid into a paid activity or go to a fun paid festival on weekends instead of setting up for a festival on school grounds. Free to all students and benefitting all the families that cant volunteer or financially contribute due to multiple jobs, many kids etc. We are all burned out now but not many new families are stepping up.

Can you really blame those people for not wanting to burn themselves out for others who can’t or won’t pitch but want to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor? People felt taken advantage of in these largely thankless roles. There wasn’t much upside for people who would like to enjoy their weekends with their families too.

Based on what I've heard/seen in multiple volunteer run organizations, the upside is when your friends volunteer with you. Then you're hanging out with your friends (and your kids are likely in a pack hanging out also with their friends) and it works. But on the flip side, you may be less likely to invite in other volunteers and people accuse your PTA/leadership team of being cliquey and not friendly so you get fewer volunteers. Catch-22.

This has played more into my decision to not volunteer. If I am showing up and being greeted with a snotty attitude, made to feel "othered" and my efforts dismissed/ignored, why I am going to keep volunteering?

Yep. I was very active in my kids’ previous school. Then we switched schools a few years ago and nobody could be bothered to learn my name. They would ask me repeatedly “do you have kids at this school?” And the answer is yes, I have 3, to people who had 1 kindergartener or a preschooler. The youngest parents seem to run everything, oblivious to the fact there were many other families at the school who had been around for some time and every event didn’t need to be geared towards only preschool and kindergarten. It was a total turn off so I stopped volunteering. Not sure how this came to be at our current school but our involvement is a fraction of what we used to do because it’s so unfriendly and cliquish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:90% of the child-related volunteer mental/emotional/physical labor is done by moms and the newer generation of moms are not into doing free labor that is being taken for granted and baked in to the school budgets. They no longer need or want that validation.

This is utterly false. 100% of the volunteer coaches for boys sports in my town are men. The vast majority of coaches in girl sports are men. At games and youth tournaments it is relatively rare to see a female coach. Nearly all of the referees in all the sports I am aware of are male. I have never seen a female youth football coach. All of the dads I know are more involved with their kids athletic activities than the moms are.

I think the statement you are making says more about your husband and your marriage than it does about our area.

It seems you took this personally based on your last sentence. But my post was about school-related volunteerism moreso than sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:90% of the child-related volunteer mental/emotional/physical labor is done by moms and the newer generation of moms are not into doing free labor that is being taken for granted and baked in to the school budgets. They no longer need or want that validation.

This is utterly false. 100% of the volunteer coaches for boys sports in my town are men. The vast majority of coaches in girl sports are men. At games and youth tournaments it is relatively rare to see a female coach. Nearly all of the referees in all the sports I am aware of are male. I have never seen a female youth football coach. All of the dads I know are more involved with their kids athletic activities than the moms are.

I think the statement you are making says more about your husband and your marriage than it does about our area.

to the previous poster, You actually proved her point.

Plus, athletics involves much more unseen labor than just coaching.

Team moms do a lot of that unseen labor and tend to be moms

[Anonymous]

They kicked parents out of schools, just like they kicked employees out of offices. Don't act surprised when we aren't thrilled to return to obligations.

[Anonymous]

We do a fair amount of volunteering but get overwhelmed with the sheer number of events asked of us that wouldn't have been an ask when I was a kid. For example, high school theater parents throw a pot luck for every evening kids practice late, band parents are asked to sign-up to bring snacks for 100+ band members for each week. The school is walking distance to fast food and a grocery store, and kids can pack dinners/snacks. I don't see why we should coordinate to leave work early for this. I do donate Costco size boxes of snacks to the band room mulitple times a year, but I don't volunteer to show up and serve it to the kids.