Frankly I don’t care for the go deep conversation that are sharing here, I’m in the camp, please spare me the details, my husband and I are not that keen about that kind of information. Young people are having sex, shocking news, actually it’s a yawn, lol.
No large family vacations with my parents and sibs or H’s parents. Our parents didn’t travel, period. Too much economic disparity among the sibs to do family trips with sibs and their children. In my family, you’re expected to use vacation and show up at the parents’ house, sleeping on sofas, recliners, etc. It was a real rebellion when H and I decided we’d get a hotel room where a) we had beds and b) H and one of my kids could escape for required solitude. We got snarky comments for years.
I never went out to dinner with my ILs. Ever. Going out to eat (or getting takeout) was just not in their universe.
We have done a couple family trips with our adult sons. (We went everywhere when they were kids, inc many camping trips.) It works out well. S1 pays for his share (he can afford it), and S2 (who can’t afford it) is our travelguide/translator/finder of interesting local cuisine. It works out well, but I don’t know if I’d do big trips with grandkids. H and I are happy to travel to them rather than expecting them to haul kids across the country/world.
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My brother who is 2 years younger had kids that were near in age to mine and we managed to do a few “staycations” at a hotel in Waikiki with our joint families. Each of us paid for our own share of expenses.
Over the summer, we had swim lessons at my brother’s house. We each paid the swimming instructor who gave private or small group lessons. We would have fun potluck meals. Other cousins could come as desired. There was a lot of cousin bonding in those summers.
My older sister had kids near my kids ages as well but was so hard to schedule with I generally gave up in frustration.
My younger sister and her family would often come over for summer swim lessons for her boys who were also of similar ages.didn’t feel the need to go anywhere.
@DrGoogle123, what was really interesting to me in those conversations was how the folks we spoke with saw their lives. Their opportunities and constraints. That women were supposed to have kids by age 23 in their minds, which precluded them from becoming doctors. Their enthusiasm about the future in Vietnam and a generalized depression I heard in Cambodia. I read a fair bit but I don’t really pick some of that up from reading or from talking to my consulting clients (often economic or political elites). No need for you to value what I value.
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True, we’re all different, not all women want to be doctors either, it’s hard to draw a conclusion from one woman to mean all women from one country.
The thread is getting off track. Please use PMs if you want to continue this discussion.
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Here’s my question to those who want their kids to pay or chip in for vacations or meals when you are together is that born out of 1)Affordability for you. It is not affordable or will reduce your own ability to do things if you pay for them or 2) A belief that it is important that they are fully self supporting and aren’t having their lifestyle supported bu you.
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For us it’s neither. It’s a matter of if we want to do what they’re doing coupled with keeping things more even. Our kids wanted to go parasailing. H and I didn’t. The kids paid for parasailing. We wanted to do ziplining - as did they - but two of them had far more expensive plane tickets to get here and the trip is their Christmas gift. They wholeheartedly agreed that those with the <$100 tickets had ziplining paid for by us while those with roughly $600 tickets paid for their own.
There’s no hard set rule. We make it up as we go along for each trip TBH, though since it was a Christmas gift we told them the airline tickets, lodging, and most food would be covered by us. Extra they wanted to buy or do would be at their expense. Then we “fudged” that to try to compensate (they all knew about it).