I think this conversation could go on forever...

As far as why it may be important now to take childfree time, as opposed to a time before both parents worked: Now that society has made it "normal" or expected that a women be away from her home and her children 50 hours, the tasks that used to be done while husband/dad was away at work, must now be completed when he is home. If you are lucky enough, you can hire someone to clean house/wash clothes/grow or shop for food/prepare meals, for most, that's not reality. Instead of mom being home, getting all of these things done during the day, she is now doing them along side her husband(if she's lucky) in the evening or weekends. If her job does not meet her needs of getting in her girlfriend time (this is actually proven neccessary for happiness in a woman) then she is also trying to get this done in eve/weekends. Back in the day,before the divorce rate was 50%, evenings consisited of kids playing in the neighborhood with their friends, families sitting down to dinner every night together, kids getting to bed at a decent time, and then Mom and Dad having their moments together. Paint the picture today it probably looks something like this: parent A picks up kids from daycare, runs kid #1 to baseball practice, picks up dinner from Subway, meets parent B at home, they eat (maybe together, probably not), Parent B helps kid #2 with homework, parent A runs back to pick up kid #1, gets home, cleans up from dinner, throws in a load of laundry...get my drift. It is sad.

As far as vacationing without kids. We've been lucky enough to always make vacations a priority. We've taken kids, we've left kids. In my 9.5 years of being a parent, it has always depended on the situation. I'm a co-sleeping, toddler-led breastfeeding mom. I never left a child before I knew they would do fine at night without me. Additionally, I didn't leave them before I knew I'd be okay without them! During those years, it was always family vacations. By the time it was okay to leave them, it was obvious for our relationship, it was crucial to spend 1:1 time with my husband. I know I have a hard time being a loving wife with all the chaos in the house, and my husband needs the reassurance that I still care about him, too.

I do think it is sad what our two income families has done to the American family. Hopefully it will somehow come back to families being able to survive without both parents out of the home FT, but until then, parents are doing what they think is best for themselves and their kids

There's my soapbox...I'll get off of it now.

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