However, family vacations are an important time, not for leisure, but for the renewal and growth as a family. During most of the year, we are occupied with our different pursuits. Children spend much of their day in school and with their friends. Even when involved in family activities, families are often apart. Various pastimes, the soccer games and piano lessons that occupy children, tend to fragment the family as parents escort their charges from one place to another.
Vacations provide a time when a family is forced to be in close proximity for an extended period.
It is on a driving vacation particularly that we learn to mediate disputes about what music to listen to. Indeed, we unfortunately become aware of the poor excuse for music that our children enjoy. After vacation, my children are thoroughly disgusted with, but can recite the lyrics to, half a dozen Motown hits their father listened to over and over again. Vacation is the time that we learn that our children's primary concern about what hotel to stay at is whether the hotel is equiped with cable television providing access to MTV music and ESPN sports. Vacation is the time when the relearn that if we miss the news we are better, not less informed.