The New Millennial Parenting Anxiety
For those determined to pass down their globe-trotting values, vacations have become ever more ambitious and goal-oriented—and exhausting.
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.
Christine Rousseau learned the hard way that pharmacies in Paris do not always sell diapers. She had run out while on vacation, and her 2-year-old son desperately needed to be put down for a nap. So in the rain, wearing heels, the clock ticking toward a messy and imminent deadline, she hopped on an electric rental scooter that she did not know how to ride. Every place she tried seemed to have fancy face creams but no diapers. She didn’t know the French word to ask for them. This situation was not très chic—but then, family trips don’t tend to be.
Some would argue that the point of a vacation is to subtract, not add, stress. But like many parents of young kids, Rousseau is committed to traveling with her family—not only for her and her husband’s sake, but also for the sake of her children, now 7 and 3. She loves seeing them learn, and traveling provides abundant opportunity. In Paris, when the streets seemed empty of toddlers, she got to explain that many young kids there attend crèches, or state-subsidized day care. In London, her son inquired why the streets were so much cleaner than the streets back home in Brooklyn, and that prompted a lesson about civics and city funding. Breaking her kids out of their bubble, she told me, “helps them be more aware that their normal may not be everybody’s normal.”
