The Holiday That Isn't

Every year, a week or two after the summer holidays, I get a version of the same message. We just got back from vacation and I need a vacation. It is usually written as a joke. The women who send it are rarely joking.

A family vacation is meant to be rest. For one person in most families, it is a project with a deadline, a budget, a packing list and a team that hasn't read the briefing. This note is about why family holidays are so exhausting for moms, and what a real break would look like.

The work before you leave

Ask a mother to describe a holiday and she will often start weeks before departure. Choosing dates around school and work. Comparing places to stay. Booking, then rebooking. Checking passports. Buying sun cream, adaptors, swim nappies and travel sickness tablets. Arranging for someone to feed the cat. Packing for four people, which mostly means packing for three people who will each forget something.

None of this shows up as holiday work. It shows up as a mood: she is stressed before the trip, and everyone else is excited.

The work while you are there

Once they arrive, the job changes shape and carries on. Someone has to know where the nearest pharmacy is, when the restaurant closes, which child needs a nap, who has had enough water and whether the toddler has been in the sun too long. Someone reads the mood of the group and changes the plan before anyone melts down.

Research helps explain why this time doesn't feel like rest. In a 2003 study in Social Forces, Marybeth Mattingly and Suzanne Bianchi found that women's free time was more often "contaminated", shared with other activities or with the presence of children, and that marriage and children widened the free-time gap between men and women. An afternoon on the beach spent watching two children in the water counts as leisure. It restores nobody.

Holidays with extended family add another layer. In 1987 the anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo described "kin work": the largely female labour of keeping families connected through visits, calls, cards and gatherings, and of managing everyone's feelings during them. Her study was small and specific, of Italian-American families in California. Anyone who has hosted the in-laws for a week will recognise the job description.

The work when you get home

Then comes the return. The unpacking, the mountain of laundry, the empty fridge, the school uniforms that must be found before Monday, the photos to sort and send to the grandparents. Several women told me this last stage is the one that makes them dread holidays, because it lands just as everyone else goes back to normal.

I wrote about this pattern in everyday life in The Leisure Gap and The Guilt of Sitting Down. A holiday doesn't suspend it. It moves it somewhere new, with less equipment.

How couples make a family holiday restful for both

The couples who manage to make holidays restful for both adults do a few specific things.

They split the trip into areas. One person owns travel and bookings, the other owns packing and kit, and neither checks the other's work. I explained why whole areas work better than shared tasks in Helping Is Not Holding.

They schedule time off inside the holiday. Each adult gets protected half-days alone while the other is fully in charge of the children, and nobody calls to ask where the sun cream is.

They plan the return. The first day home is treated as a working day, divided in advance, instead of a day she quietly absorbs.

Some women also take a different kind of trip: a few days alone, or with a friend, with nobody to manage. Almost every woman I've interviewed who has done this describes it the same way. It was the first time in years she had been somewhere without being responsible for it.

Questions people ask

Why do moms feel more tired after a family vacation?

The planning, packing, supervising and unpacking usually fall to them, and their time off is often spent watching children. That kind of time doesn't allow the mental switch-off that rest needs.

How can couples share the work of a family holiday?

Divide it into whole areas, such as bookings, packing and the return home, and give each partner full ownership of theirs. Build in time alone for each adult during the trip.

Is it selfish for a mother to take a trip alone?

No. A few days without anyone to manage can be the only real rest she gets in a year, and families usually benefit when she comes back rested.