By Kelley Mack 
The year is 2026: we’re inviting thousands of strangers to get ready with us, threatening our own deaths on a lot of different hills and, if you’re a millennial mom, determined to have a ’90s summer.
Some top to-dos on the ’90s mom summer checklist? Lots of outside play, limited screens, less hustle, more simplicity. Overall, evoking the “carefree” summers of the 1990s.
But did anyone ever ask the real ‘90s moms if summers back then were all we’re cracking them up to be?
If my own memory serves me right, my parents talked a whole lot about summers in the ’60s, especially that one in ‘69.
Don’t get me wrong, the ‘90s are worthy of the praise they’re getting these days. Spice Girls, Limited Too, and Tamogatchis? Iconic. Oregon Trail, blow-up bedroom furniture, and TGIF? Cannot be replicated.
There’s just one catch: the ones romanticizing the decade are the millennials whose childhood spanned it. The ‘90s felt carefree and simple because they were… for us. Our parents gifted us such a childhood not because their lives were footloose and fancy-free, but because they wanted that for us.
Our moms were juggling jobs, childcare, laundry, meltdowns, bills, and cultural divides too. And, lest we forget, all while navigating the dawn of this new thing trying to turn the world on its head called the internet.
Sure, 2026 is no doubt more complex than 1996—the world has, indeed, turned on its head thanks to the internet. Just like 1996 was more complex than 1966. It’s called progress—for better and worse.
It seems our algorithms are keeping us so busy romanticizing the past and fantasizing about the future that there’s no time left to appreciate the present. Is the present not worthy? Pretty soon, won’t we be romanticizing today because wasn’t it just the other day we were praying for it?
By all means, choose sunlight over blue light this summer. Pretend the internet doesn’t exist. Add some over-processed sugar back into the snacktime rotation. Tune out the news so you can tune into the game your kids made up with nothing but their imagination and sidewalk chalk.
But also, place that grocery delivery order, turn on an episode of Bluey for nine minutes of peace and quiet, delegate the week’s dinner menu to ChatGPT, and treat yourself to that $8 latte you definitely could not make the same at home. All without shame.
Don’t try to be the perfect ’90s mom this summer. Spoiler alert: They didn’t exist back then, and they still don’t today (though they have turned into fabulous grandmas!).
Because come 2056, the next generation of moms will be romanticizing the summer of ‘26, trying their darndest to recreate that perfect summer you made possible for them.
Originally published on Coffee + Crumbs
by Karen Johnson 
by Krystal Sieben 
