Like many New York City parents, Marva Babel has willingly paid upwards of $8,000 to send her tween daughter to an upstate sleepaway camp for the past few summers.
It was a pricey way for the Brooklyn resident’s 12-year-old, Aleim Tucker, to escape the city for a few short months — but to Babel, it was money well spent.
A wrench was soon thrown into the family’s summer plans when Babel closed her Crown Heights cocktail bar, which she co-owned with her twin sister.
As a result, she and her husband no longer had that type of cash to shell out — but they were still adamant about giving their daughter a rewarding, fun-filled summer — one, as Babel puts it, off her iPad and outdoors in nature.
The Brooklyn mom began her quest for more affordable summer camp alternatives and found one — in Morocco.
“I took a look at the numbers and everything, and it was much, much, much cheaper,” a shocked Babel told The Post, noting that the camp came out to about $800 total. “Like, crazy.”
Babel’s daughter’s goal is to be a competitive swimmer, but she found herself striking out when searching for a local option.
“I was looking at swim camps, and it was just so expensive — like, beyond expensive,” the Brooklyn mom said. “I felt like she’s not going to get a substantial amount of practice and support to become a competitive swimmer the way she would like to, because I just can’t afford to give that to her.”
Then, after learning from a friend who had already enrolled her son in a Moroccan swim camp run by a former Olympian in the capital city of Rabat — Babel was immediately intrigued.
Even with flights and lodging for both of them, Babel spent between $4,600 and $5,000 for the entire trip to Morocco, roughly half of her daughter’s previous camp — plus she’s getting an international vacation and giving her daughter the experience she couldn’t get closer to home.
“I went to Morocco, to Marrakesh, once about three years ago and had a great time,” she told The Post.
Babel’s solution may seem extreme to some, but certainly not to parents in the tri-state area.
With costs ballooning for both traditional sleepaway camps and day camps, close to $20,000 for a seven-week session, parents in online groups and WhatsApp group chats are scrambling.
The price of camps “has gone up exponentially in the last number of years,” Patti Roberts, better known as “The Summer Camp Lady,” confirmed to The Post.
Roberts has been advising parents on the best getaways for their children for more than three decades and said she’s seen tuition fees “just keep going up and up and up.”
On average, she said, parents can expect to pay between $14,000 and $17,000 for popular sleepaway camps in Maine, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where children leave the city and spend the summer swimming, learning sports, connecting with nature and making lifelong friendships.
For day camps, which function more like a typical school day and feature instruction in everything from math to dance, prices now run between $10,000 and $12,000.
“It sounds ridiculous, and I shouldn’t be saying it, but for the amount of money that you could send two or three children to camp for the summer, you could go rent a house in Tuscany,” Roberts pointed out.
And for many families, paying for camp is not optional.
Two-earner households are now the norm nationwide, meaning camp is not just an enriching summer experience but also a childcare necessity.
“Summer camp is incredibly expensive; the cost is rising incredibly quickly, similar to child care costs, and on average, the weekly cost of summer camp is more expensive than the weekly cost of daycare,” Paige Connell, a Boston-based advocate, content creator, and mother of four, told The Post.
On her TikTok and Instagram accounts, where she has more than 700,000 followers combined, Connell focuses on advocating for working mothers and for policies, including paid leave and universal childcare, and says that summer camp is part of the puzzle that often gets overlooked.
“We look at summer camp as a ‘nice to have,’ and not a necessity — and it absolutely is,” she said.
Faced with paying for a used car to send their kids to summer camp, though, some parents are getting creative.
For the past several summers, Maddy Novich’s three children have been signed up for every sort of camp imaginable, from LEGO engineering camp to nature camp, and at an affordable price.
None of those camps, however, has been in the US.
Novich, a college professor, lives in Harlem with her family during the school year, but in the summer, they hit the road.
Her kids have now done camps in Edinburgh, Amsterdam, and Krakow, Poland. This summer, they are headed to sleepaway camp in Switzerland.
“Once you’re in Europe, you have access to a wide range of camps at different price points,” she says.
Novich and her husband first got the idea to check out camps abroad on a family vacation to Amsterdam.
“I turned to my husband and said, ‘You know, if we were in New York, our kids would be in a summer camp right now. Maybe they have that experience here in Amsterdam,’” she recalled. “I did a very quick search, and lo and behold, Amsterdam is one of those cities that has a ton of summer camp options.”
And while a week of day camp back home could run close to $1,000 per week, Novich was surprised to find options abroad to be much more affordable — more like 350 Euros, or about $401 per week, equaling a little over $4,000 for an entire 11-week itinerary.
It’s not just about the money, though — it’s about what the whole family is getting out of the experience.
“When we did it for the first time, we were, like, wow,” she said. “My husband and I went to this fancy lunch, we went to the art museum, and we read the plaques — you know, we really enjoyed our time. We had a vacation, our kids had a vacation, and then we had time together.”
“I think once people try it, they will really realize how amazing it is for everybody,” said the Harlem resident of her family’s experience. “Everybody wins.”
Of course, Novich acknowledges that her family’s ability to spend multiple weeks abroad may not be attainable for some.
Her husband can work his tech job remotely while they are abroad, and as a professor, she has summers off. She also relies on savvy strategies to make the summer even more affordable, like home swaps.
“Home exchange is a very interesting way to travel with children, because you swap your house with other families wherever you go,” she said. “So, housing is free, essentially.”
And by spending their summers with children from other countries — they ensure the staff at each camp speaks English — Novich’s kids get a little extra dose of culture.
“Kids don’t need to speak the same language to have a great time,” she said. “The other kids didn’t speak English, but it didn’t matter because they had this universal language of play. The kids would have a great time, whether they spoke the same language or not.”
Roberts, the camp advisor, said that she hates to see parents opt out of camp because of high costs, because sleepaway camps in particular provide so much for kids.
“You’re giving your child a gift,” she said. “And that gift is independence, but with people who are like parents running it. That’s where they learn how to make new friends and try new things, but without mom and dad controlling the narrative.”
Roberts said she’s watched as camps she’s worked with struggle to absorb rising inflation in recent years and work to offer creative solutions to ensure kids can afford to attend.
Many camps are offering shorter sessions, two or three weeks instead of seven, at proportionally lower costs; some “also offer scholarships because they want kids to experience camp,” she noted.
Connell also sees parents pooling resources to cobble together a summer that doesn’t break the bank.
“I know that in my mom group chat, we all will text each other the different camps we’re looking at, how much they cost, what the hours are, what weeks we think we’re going to go, like we as a collective research and share information,” she said.
She also advises parents, who are tempted to take out loans or go into debt to pay for high-rated camps, not to compare their situation to other families.
“…my advice is to kind of relieve yourself of that pressure, if you can, and figure out what is the best version for you.”
