There’s a crisis in parental support in the U.S. and the Surgeon General put out a report on it.

COVID soured a lot of parents on school-based volunteering, the closures and the restrictions but also the attitude that parents had no right to have any expectations whatsoever of their schools, and the offloading of a ton of school-based services onto parents, who were screamed at for treating schools “like daycare” if they asked how their kids IEP was going to be fulfilled without access to OT.

Most people I know volunteer now only in things that directly benefit their kids. They use the rest of their resources for enrichment for their family/close friends. They know the school won’t be there for them, and don’t feel they have an obligation to be there for the schools. It’s sad but it was probably inevitable.

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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.

Well, it works but given the choice of doing other things, many people would rather do other things with their free time. It’s not like they can’t gather and hang out outside of school with friends. And this goes back to the job being thankless. People will criticize the job you do. Not inclusive enough, bad decorations, food not up to par (why no vegan, gluten free, dairy free, etc etc choices?!), prizes not good. Have you ever helped run these things? It’s not some amazing time with your friends and kids all running around. It’s a headache and people wonder why they’re banging their heads against the wall bothering at all given the grief you get.

PP here and yes. I've run things for the PTA, been a board member in a rec sports organization, done the training-required volunteer roles for swim team, led things for church, and done a variety of other volunteer roles. Still am. After all, the people who volunteer for one thing usually are the ones who run everything. I know it's thankless. I also know when people have been complaining about it being thankless they've mentioned what could make it better, and it's usually having more fun with other volunteers.

If you’re one of the rare groups that has an abundance of volunteers then you’re lucky. But most groups aren’t overflowing people ready to donate lots of time to have fun with other volunteers. The point of this post is “where have all the volunteers gone” not how can I spend more time volunteering and having fun? Usually the complainers are the people driving people away from volunteering at all. They have all the ideas but don’t care to put any of them in action.

Anonymous wrote:I'm involved in scouts, and there is definitely a down turn in parents volunteering and showing up for planning meetings, etc. Lots of parents want their kids in scouting, but not enough people are stepping up to lead the troops or say "oh, I can't lead a troop, but I'll be the point person for this outing or plan a fall activity or ....". This stuff doesn't just magically happen, and those of us that started doing it pre-pandemic are aging out of the system. There's a bunch of people I know whose kids are in college who are still trying to help out because they don't want these opportunities to disappear entirely, but there will be an end to that. I'm a FT working mom with three kids so I do try to minimize all the bureaucratic crap to the extent possible for people, but we're still struggling. At some point we'll just end up with the pay-to-participate activities.

That kind of thing has been happening forever. When I was in high school marching band in the early 90's, one of the moms whose kid had graduated YEARS (I think 5 or 6 years before I was even a freshman) before was still putting in 15-20 hours/week volunteering! She would come to school during the school day and sit in the music office to answer the phone, do any paper work required for marching band competitions, orchestra festivals, etc-basically she was an unpaid secretary.

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Anonymous wrote:I feel like covid helped many of us realize what things we missed and what things we didn't. Those kind of off season things don't add value for my family, they just add pressure and business and reduce family time. So, I'm not going to volunteer to make them happen.

What does "family time" even mean?

I would rather that DH and I are supporting my kids and their team on the weekends, rather than doing domestic chores on the weekend.

Eating dinner, watching TV, going to the movies, shopping, visiting relatives etc, happen in as usual anyways.

I feel bad for you if you can't think "family time" could be anything more meaningful than "domestic chores." No, that's not what people are doing on wknds post-Covid, when a lot of us now have more flexibility during the workweek. Family time literally means all of us together doing something or siblings spending time together. Events, outings, riding bikes, seeing family and friends, etc. Not just structured activities all the time.

I spent TONS of time volunteering pre-covid in leadership roles and really whatever needed to happen.

The fall after kids were back in the classroom (fall 2021), we had a very bad experience with the admin of our school. Because of that I stopped all volunteering for the school after that school year was up. It was completely unrelated to covid/virtual school (hi open school nutters!).

Our kids ended up doing sports/activities out of school and we now spend our time supporting those.

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.

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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.

Yes, many things I have volunteered for end up being a waste of time, or else there aren’t enough people so I get stuck there longer than I intended.

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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.

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Anonymous wrote:Are the student participant numbers down too or just the parent volunteer numbers? Some families may have decided that life was more enjoyable when their kids weren't overbooked with activities. But, that would mean both parent and student numbers would be down.

I do think in some areas people are fleeing to more expensive pay-to-participate opportunties (ex: club sports over rec, classes at studios or gyms over other kinds of activities). But not everything.

Lots of people tried club sports when other local options shut down. Travel basketball was the first activity that my kids had to return. Practices were outdoors and games were non-existant, but the club was doing everything the could to get the kids doing something

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'm involved in scouts, and there is definitely a down turn in parents volunteering and showing up for planning meetings, etc. Lots of parents want their kids in scouting, but not enough people are stepping up to lead the troops or say "oh, I can't lead a troop, but I'll be the point person for this outing or plan a fall activity or ....". This stuff doesn't just magically happen, and those of us that started doing it pre-pandemic are aging out of the system. There's a bunch of people I know whose kids are in college who are still trying to help out because they don't want these opportunities to disappear entirely, but there will be an end to that. I'm a FT working mom with three kids so I do try to minimize all the bureaucratic crap to the extent possible for people, but we're still struggling. At some point we'll just end up with the pay-to-participate activities.

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Anonymous wrote:I feel like covid helped many of us realize what things we missed and what things we didn't. Those kind of off season things don't add value for my family, they just add pressure and business and reduce family time. So, I'm not going to volunteer to make them happen.

But do you still put your kids in activities?

Yes, and I volunteer with the activities that I put them in. But I don't want them to do things like off season tournaments. If the rest of the team goes, and they need one of my kids to compete, he'll go but if the activity gets cancelled because parents don't want it enough to volunteer, then I think it's fine to let it go.

Ha I feel this post wholeheartedly. I am one of those people that volunteers and organizes and makes things happen. My older kid was barely in school when the pandemic started. I think that had a huge affect on our school's PTA and volunteering in general.

The thing that drives me is that my parents weren't able to volunteer in any of these things and as a result, I didn't get to experience what I considered quintessential American community culture/events. My dad was always working, my mom didn't speak enough English to make it work. Plus I was bussed to a school 40 minutes from my house. So with my kids now, I'm making a strong effort to show up and volunteer. Nowadays, if there aren't enough volunteers (and organizers!), events won't happen. So even though I get burnt out, I make it a point to organize and volunteer.

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.

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Anonymous wrote:I blame phone addiction. The fractured attention makes people feel frazzled and like they have no time. They are also constantly fed useless garbage content that breeds entitlement.

I agree with this except for the last sentence.

Will add to some of us different experiences during Covid that we’re still coming down from. It was a very stressful time for everyone not everyone had a pod or wfh situation and some of us were really struggling. I’m guessing that’s where a lot of the teacher burn is coming from too.

The impact of covid on society is long. We have more freedom than during deep pandemic but not everyone has recovered. Also some school cohorts were impacted in ways that are still getting worked out.

To the topic though, thank you for the reminder to make more time for pta.

DP. I think it depends on what kind of content you consume on your phone. I do think there is a corner of the influencer world filled with content designed to make people feel good about focusing on themselves - after all, the influencers can get more brand deals that way.