Why family vacations matter

I’m a convert to the importance of vacations, a believer in how such special temporal zones can strengthen relationships and sweeten our days.

I was not always zealous about vacation time. My wife, Lisa, and I lived on a meager income for many years after we married, so perhaps our indifference to taking time off was rooted in necessity.

And those early schooling, work and parenting years fully absorbed not just our means but our time and energy. Finding some fun and refreshment in our day-to-day prosaic life was a survival strategy. Short drives with the family through the gentle hills of central Pennsylvania to pick berries or cut down a Charlie Brown-ish pine tree for Christmas was about the best we could do. (Of note, research suggests that leisure and travel — that may take money away from necessities — may not have the same benefits for poorer families.)

Rare were those special family road trips that my former BYU colleague Susan Rugh wrote about in her delightful modern history of the American family vacation, “Are We There Yet?” In the post-World War II era, increasing middle-class incomes, big cars, new interstate highways, popular national parks and nuclear family values combined to produce a surge in family travel that captured the essence of an era (despite the children’s backseat bickering).

The few road trips my family experienced usually had a clear utilitarian element, such as moving to a distant city for schooling or employment with a trailer in tow. Our five-day cross-country adventure from the Bay Area to central Pennsylvania for my doctoral studies (with a brief stop in Chicago for our son’s emergency appendectomy) conjures up laughs and odd memories today. But it was anything but relaxing and refreshing.

It’s not that I was unaware of the importance of curating novel experiences and keeping the fun in relationships. I’m a relationship and marriage researcher and educator by trade. I teach this stuff! So, I sensed the risk in my casual commitment to couple and family vacation time.

Eventually, our economic fortunes improved. But by that time, our children were in their mid-teenage years with plans of their own. Our work and life demands didn’t fade; yet it got easier to attend to that gnawing need to call a timeout to the daily grind and take some real time off. So, in midlife, Lisa and I began to plan a couple of trips.

I trace my conversion to the personal and relational value of travel vacations to our first cruise — to Alaska. The stress-free days, gentle rocking motions of the ship, mesmerizing ocean waves, oxygen-saturated sea-level air, clouds-and-snow-covered summer peaks and humpback whales — we could feel the accumulated drudgery dissolving. And the stress-free time together somehow translated into more bonding talk — about meaningful experiences in the past and especially about our dreams and plans for the future.

Of course, it’s not just the relaxing and fun itself that buoys the spirit and sweetens the companionship. The anticipation put some sparkle in the days that preceded the trip and the memories of those times together are inextricably woven into our unique couple identity now; a part of who we are together is where we have been during those vacations. (The Norwegian fjords that awed us for a few days a decade ago are a continuing rich source of connection for us, facilitated by framed photos hanging on our walls.)

And in the Vrbo age, we have initiated biennial sibling reunions, usually close to some West Coast beach. I admit that I neglected sibling relationships during those busy family- and career-building decades. I did so knowing — again — the research on how valuable it is to maintain those connections. Sibling relationships are the longest family relationships we have and can be a vital source of support and meaning in our lives. And they testify to how we grow, change, forgive and forget in family relationships. That sibling fractious tension of the first two decades of life has morphed into sweet and rich friendship in the last few decades of life.

So, I’m a born-again believer now in the family or couple getaway. Personal experiences in later life have convinced me of the empirical accuracy of what I taught my students for decades. Family relationships are deepened and strengthened and blessed by special times away from our ordinary daily lives.

With the summer travel season upon us, here’s to your family vacations in their many flavors, locations and seasons of life.

Alan J. Hawkins is manager of the Utah Marriage Commission and an emeritus professor of family life at Brigham Young University.

This story appears in the June 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.