Are Yuppie Meritocrats Killing Summer?

I’m just back from visiting my mother on the Cape and it’s with sadness that I report that all the families seem to be leaving now and heading home. That regretful process used to happen in September. Kids would prolong summer as long as they could out of good, normal hatred of school. Now the end of summer seems to be coming in August for the usual reasons—”kids” have pressing career-related activities that await them. One sort of pre-school grind or another—I don’t have the foggiest, not being a breeder. But I have to wonder whether blue staters, having eked out every last drop of productivity in their own lives and turned it into real estate, are not now grinding their children’s leisure into fish meal so the kids won’t fall behind on the track. O blessed kids.