A trip with kids, or a vacation with kids, what’s the difference?: Childcare
A full-time working parent with a decent “work-life-family” balance might spend 40 hours at their job and 40 hours with their children per week. Assuming a traditional nine-to-five alongside 3–6 hours with kids per day weekdays, and 6–12 hours per day with kids weekends, we are talking equivalent of two full-time jobs. Likewise with a stay at home parent, who would be clocking overtime at 80+ hours with the kids per week.
Just like a “day job”, children — even if your chosen profession, your passion, your love — are work. No matter what there’s the basics which vary depending on age: food, shelter, transportation, physical and emotional safety, socialization. There is a reason why volunteer babysitters and nannies, outside a nuclear family, are practically non-existent. And as anyone who has spent or is spending 80+ hours a week on work can attest, continuing to do their job on vacation would not be a break.
As an aside — it varies by person, but around 40+ hours a week focused on my kids is about my personal limit for personal emotional regulation, the ability to bring joy to play, and the need for self care outside of my relationship with them. For me, I assert being a working mom makes me a better and more focused mom, and that even with a full-time job on top of the kids I feel like I work less overall than your average stay at home parent, on top of having more financial resources to pay for help where I need it and yes: take the occasional real vacation.
Enter a personal saying I have to help me plan my family trips: “a vacation is not a vacation without full-time childcare”. For our family, for a variety of reasons, we don’t manage to take a vacation every year, but we do have the privilege of taking a family trip at least once a year. One year we took a 30+ day cross country trip with the kids in a classic camper, for example. Besides the time off work, it was relatively inexpensive. We did all our own cooking, had an electric car so minimal gas expenses, and stayed in camp grounds. What it was not, however, was a vacation.
I’m in the middle of a true family vacation right now, with a babysitter coming 8 hours a day. This allows me to spend 1–1 time with each of my children, including on focus areas (I’m moonlighting as a reading and swimming instructor!), as well as 1–1 time with myself and my partner. Even staying in a nice hotel, we have a kitchen and prefer to do a lot of our own cooking. That means daily cooking, dishes, and the beach and craft activities means a lot of daily mess and cleanup. The babysitter also allows an adult to clean (when we find that relaxing) while she spends time with the kids, or vis-versa to spend more time with my family while she functions as a parent helper.
I assert that taking a week off work and school, and staying at home with a full-time caregiver around as a treat, is more of a vacation than traveling to a locale outside the home with no extra support. That said, getting out of the home context can vastly simplify the day to day: new adventures for all, less stuff to manage and day-to-day tasks to tempt one away from the vacation, and the chance for a change of context to change perspective.
The ultimate point of this article is to give you, and others the freedom to call a trip with kids, without childcare, what it is: a family trip not a family vacation. There’s still value in stepping away from one type of work into another, in terms of a perspective shift. But I’d also encourage families with kids to take true vacation with kids as often as they can. A true break makes me both a better employee — when I return — and a better mother throughout the year. Of course those with older kids might go a step more, and take a vacation without them. For me, at least for now, part of my balance is vacationing together. They benefit, I hope, from the change of scene and routine as much as I do.
