Taking your infant child on vacation is pointless.

It’s not about an experience for the baby (they have no concept of object permanence, let alone travelling yet). It’s about the parents getting used to/learning the ropes of travelling with kids (and to a lesser extent the baby getting used to being out of the house). In many ways, an infant is also easier to travel with than an older kid (more portable, sleeps a lot, doesn’t need entertaining, don’t need to pay additional travel fare). It’s also totally possible to be a conscientious parent and not just let your kid scream in public while on holiday, but it’s a lot of work - we went to Paris when my daughter was 10 weeks old and operated a no-cry policy in the hotel for the four nights we were there, which meant me breastfeeding her more or less nonstop from 10pm-2pm every night until she conked out. We couldn’t even try to soothe her/rock her to sleep because we wouldn’t have been able to do it fast enough to avoid her crying and potentially disturbing people. Travelling with an infant is definitely only at best only 75% as much fun as without one (and more often closer to 25%) but I’d still rather do that than sit at home til my kid’s 18.

/r/unpopularopinion Thread