I felt guilty for going on a kid-free vacation. Then a stranger convinced me every parent deserves a break.

24.03.2024 - 11:51 / insider.com

Last summer, my husband and I spent five days celebrating my 40th birthday in my favorite place: Bermuda. We relaxed on the sandy, white beach and floated on the crystal-clear water as long as our hearts desired. We did what we wanted, when we wanted, with no one altering our schedule but us. For just under a week, we left our children with their grandparents to celebrate my milestone birthday. It was what we needed, but it all began with guilt.

"Why can't we come?" my son asked daily during the month of July.

"Sometimes parents need to get away alone," I responded repeatedly. "It's not a punishment. When we get the rest we need, it allows us to be better parents." But beneath those words, my guilt expanded internally by the day.

Wondering if I was the only mother feeling remorse for needing time away from her children, I did a quick search on Google. Article after article, I read from mothers expressing the judgment they'd received for vacationing without their kids. For every story persuading parents to take time away, there was another one highlighting the shame we experience for doing so. This controversy is what steers some parents away from a much-needed child-free escape.

Mothers are expected to put their children's needs first indefinitely. The day our first child is born, our lives should now revolve around them forever — that's the message we receive. We're told how to feed, when to return to work, and even how to discipline. We're criticized when we don't look the way society expects mothers to look and when we struggle through the peaks and valleys of motherhood. Society expects us to mother with perfection and as a result, we find ourselves in an impossible situation. We hesitate to care for ourselves because society may perceive it as poor parenting.

We feel our children's emotions on a personal level. When my younger son was injured at preschool, I felt nothing but panic as we raced to the emergency room — his pain became my own. When my older son sat onstage at his fifth-grade promotion, the words, "These children will do great things," filled me with pride — my happy tears originated from his accomplishments. Everything our children do feels like a reflection of us, and while sometimes that's a positive experience, it also places unreasonable pressure on our shoulders.

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When my children began asking why they couldn't come on our vacation with us, I felt their disappointment in my gut. Their defeat became my own, and I let it sit there, festering for a month. Despite knowing we were doing what was right for us, which, in turn, would be good for them, I questioned my decision. I heard society whispering, "Why did you have children if you feel the need to leave them?"

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