The Sidewalk Economy — A Meditation on Professionalized Childhood

The snow stopped falling around midnight, leaving behind eight inches of the heavy, wet kind that makes your back hurt just looking at it. By morning, the subdivision had that peculiar suburban silence—the world muffled under white, waiting for the ritual scraping to begin.

I stood at my front window with coffee, watching the neighborhood not happen.

When I was a kid, this was the sound of opportunity. The scrape of aluminum on concrete would start before dawn—the ambitious kids, the ones who understood the first-mover advantage. By 7 AM, they'd have half the block done and be counting their earnings. The late risers, kids like me who had to be prodded out of bed by parents who understood the value of a work ethic even if their son didn't, would begrudgingly drag ourselves out into the cold, resentful of the early birds who'd already claimed the good driveways.

I hated every minute of it. The cold seeping through my gloves. The endless repetition. The way Mrs. Schimelpfenning would inspect your work and point out the corner you missed. The knowledge that the plow would come through later and undo half your work anyway.

But I did it. We all did it. Because there was money, and money meant comic books or model trains or whatever currency of childhood we were accumulating that season.

Now, looking out at the pristine, untouched sidewalks, I couldn't help but wonder: where are they?

The elderly couple three doors down were in their eighties. The single mom across the street worked two jobs. My own sidewalk stretched before me like an accusation. And not a single enterprising youth in sight.

My first instinct was the one that every generation has about the next: they're lazy. Soft. Too busy with their video games and their TikToks to engage with the physical world. Back in MY day, we understood the value of a dollar, the dignity of work, the—

But then I stopped myself. Because that's what old people do. That's what old people have always done, going back to ancient Rome probably. "Kids these days" is the war cry of every generation that's forgotten what it was actually like to be young.

I didn't want to shovel sidewalks. I did it because there was literally nothing else to do and my parents made me. The work itself was miserable. If I'd had access to the digital universe that exists in every kid's pocket now, would I have chosen frozen fingers over Minecraft? Honestly?

So maybe it's not laziness. Maybe it's that we've given them better options.

But that didn't feel quite right either.

I thought about my own kids. Had I ever suggested they shovel the neighbors' walks? I did, once. The look of disdain on those faces had me retreat immediately. I wasn't going to die on that hill. There are only so many parenting battles you can fight in a day, and "make my children perform manual labor for elderly strangers in freezing temperatures" wasn't going to be one of them.

But even if I'd pressed the issue, even if I'd been willing to be the hardnosed parent, would I have actually sent them out there? What if they slip on ice and break something? What if they accidentally ding someone's car with the shovel? What if—and this is where my mind goes to the dark places—what if they knock on the wrong door? We've spent their entire childhood teaching them stranger danger, don't talk to people you don't know, and now I'm supposed to send them door-to-door soliciting work from neighbors we've never actually met?

The truth is, I probably would have talked myself out of it even without their disdain. The liability alone would have done it.

And then there's the schedule. Between school and writing classes and the homework that somehow takes until 9 PM, when exactly would they shovel? Saturday morning? That's when they have piano practice. Sunday? That's the makeup homework day for everything they didn't finish during the week.

We've professionalized childhood.

Every activity has a coach, a uniform, a schedule, a fee structure. We've taken the messy, improvised, figure-it-out-yourself economy of being a kid and turned it into a resume-building enterprise. You don't just do things anymore—you join organizations, you get certified, you document it for college applications.

Even the actual labor has been professionalized away from us. I wasn't going to shovel my own sidewalk—I'd already texted my snowblower guy. He's reliable, efficient, and I don't have to worry about throwing out my back. My neighbors had probably done the same thing, outsourcing the work to actual professionals rather than trusting it to whatever kid showed up with a shovel.

We've created a world where the informal economy—the cash-for-work, handshake-deal, figure-out-the-rate-as-you-go economy—doesn't really exist anymore. Kids don't handle cash. They don't have that visceral loop of "I worked for an hour, here's ten dollars, this is what ten dollars can buy." Everything's digital, abstract, mediated through apps and accounts their parents control.

Maybe the kids aren't showing up because we've made it impossible for them to show up.

Or maybe I'm overthinking this. Maybe they're just inside where it's warm, which is exactly where I want to be.

I was contemplating this, still holding my coffee, still staring at my unshoveled walk, when the doorbell rang.

A girl stood there in a green vest, smile bright, clipboard ready. Behind her, sitting in a car at the curb, a parent supervised.

"Hi! Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?"

I looked at her order form, professionally printed. I looked at the parent in the car, engine running. I looked at the sidewalk behind her, unshoveled.

"I'll take seven boxes," I said. "The Thin Mints, Samoas, whatever you've got."

She beamed, marking down my order with practiced efficiency.

There was a pause then—the kind where your brain, for reasons unclear, decides to test a thought out loud.

"Actually," I said, lowering my voice slightly, as if I were proposing something illegal, "I'll buy five more boxes if you shovel my sidewalk. I'll pay you extra for that too."

For a moment, her smile stayed in place, but her eyes flicked—not to me, but past me, toward the driveway. Toward the snow. Toward the car.

It was the briefest hesitation, as if the clipboard didn't have a box for that.

Then the smile returned, brighter, more automatic.

"Oh," she said carefully, "no thank you. We're just doing cookies today."

"Right," I said, suddenly aware that I was a grown man trying to barter baked goods for manual labor.

"But would you like to add the S'mores flavor?" she continued, recovering the script with impressive professionalism.

I bought the cookies. She thanked me and moved on to the next house, her parent's car creeping along behind her like a security detail.

I stood there with my receipt, watching her go, my sidewalk still buried under eight inches of heavy, wet snow, thinking about economies and childhoods and the world we've built without quite meaning to.

The snowblower guy texted. He was running late. Might not make it until tomorrow.

Even the snow had to be scheduled.