Vacations and Working Moms!

Planning (and often funding) a holiday or vacation can be difficult when you are a working mother. It can often seem easier to keep on working rather than attempt the task of organising a family holiday. Further challenges are often created when both parents are working and/or children are attending different schools. Planning a vacation may require you to think outside of the square a bit. You may need to consider such questions as: what kind of family are you? Do you want to vacation together? Do you want one long holiday or several more frequent weekenders? Do you want to camp or would you rather stay in a hotel? The logistics of fitting work, school and leisure together can be pieced together by working out what type of holiday you want. Maybe your children want to go to holiday camp for a few weeks and you can go and visit them their for a few days. Whichever choice of holiday you decide on, you should make sure that you actually go.

Vacationing whether as a family or alone is an importance leisure practice - especially for working mothers. In his book Leisure Life: Myth, Masculinity, and ModernityTony Blackshaw writes, 'Today we may only occasionally be able to identify happiness by felicitation; to make the leisure life-world manifest and enjoy it for what it is. We might not have accepted this contingency, but we have adapted to it, and have coped with it' (2003, p.93). Leisure is such an important part of working peoples lives and should be taken as seriously as work. Leisure time - such as holidays and vacations - are needed to allow people to dislocate themselves from their work. In a casualized working environment leisure activities are needed as part of our identity formation and to make sure that all parts of life are lived.