Recession Impacts Kids' Summer Plans?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/06/16/kids.summer.plans/index.html

"Sheila Bernus Dowd's two children attended so many camps last summer that she used spreadsheets to keep track of their whereabouts.

This year is a different story.

Dowd's 9-year-old son Caden's only camp plans include a week at roller hockey camp for $100, which includes the cost of equipment. It's a far cry from 2008, when just one of his camps, involving video-game developing, had a $1,000 price tag."

Is this what the word "sacrifice" means to contemporary Americans? Not sending your children to eight different sports camps or to a videogame developing camp with a $1,000 price tag every Summer? I can't speak for anyone else, but when I was a child my Summer vacations were spent in my own neighborhood with my neighborhood friends. We passed the time by starting a pickup game of baseball or kickball, playing a game of Cowboys and Indians in the backyard, or by simply riding bikes around and causing mischief throughout the neighborhood. My parents didn't need spreadsheets to keep track of my whereabouts, all that was required by me was to be home for dinner or at least give them a phone call to let them know where I was, and to be home before it got dark outside. It was the best time of my life. How I wish I could go back to those times and how I wish the children in today’s America could experience those times. But alas, I grew up in a different time in a different America; I lived in Pat Buchanan's America.