‘Why would we stop holidaying together?’ Three families on the joy of travelling with adult children
Inever feel more like a child than when I am travelling with my parents. At 24 years old, I revert into the teenage version of myself, relying on my mum to keep my passport safe and my dad to put the itinerary together.
But for me, these holidays are more important than ever. As an adult, quality time with my parents has dwindled as we go about our own lives. I find myself wanting to spend more time with them and have new adventures. Now that I’m grown up, I’m no longer a mere spectator to the holiday planning; I actively allocate time, effort and annual leave to make our family trips happen – even if I leave it to my folks to figure out the details.
And it’s not just me. There’s a renewed desire among twenty- and thirtysomething-year-olds to holiday with parents, and travel trade publications are calling multigenerational holidays one of the industry’s biggest post-pandemic trends. Thanks to opened borders, families – with their adult children – are heading interstate or overseas together for the first time in years.
‘I never get to see that side of her’: Nikhitaa and Sakun
Nikhitaa and her mother, Sakun, live states apart in the US, and reunite for holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. But after a five-year hiatus, in 2022 they travelled back to Malaysia to see family and quickly became reacquainted with their home away from home – and driving in the left lane.
‘She knows this many people in just one city!’: Nikhitaa (left) with her sister Caristha and mother, Sakun, at Batu Caves in Gombak, Malaysia
Nikhitaa: Watching my mum was one of the best things about travelling back to Malaysia. [In Malaysia] it’s so apparent [my mum] is so comfortable there and she knows everybody. It is insane. I don’t think I know that many people in my life and she knows this many people in just one city!
Sometimes it feels like everybody is in everybody’s business, which actually feels really sweet because I didn’t grow up around culture like that in the US. But for my mum everything just seemed so natural. I don’t want to say she doesn’t feel at home in America, but I could see how easy it was for her to go back and remember all the roads, the language and the culture.
I don’t really get to hear her speak Malay or Tamil here in the US but in Malaysia she spoke it so fluently … I never get to see that side of her.
Sakun: Going back to Malaysia after many years was so refreshing. I absolutely fell back into old routines that I was surprised at how much I remembered. Even driving on the other side of the road compared [with] the US, I was a bit worried about. But I managed it easily.
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I think I was most surprised by how excited Nikhi and her sister were walking down memory lane with me. I took them to our old haunts, a lot of them were places they had been to when they were younger.
As a mum, them being so excited to come back to Malaysia made this trip so much more meaningful.
‘It was a bit weird living together again’: Stephen and Sandy
When Sandy’s three children were growing up, the family would often go on beach holidays together. Now the family are scattered around Western Australia – Sandy and her husband in Geraldton, her youngest son, Stephen, in Perth – but for their most recent family holiday they returned to the coast for a camping trip at Quobba Station, north of Carnarvon.
‘I’ve gained a better appreciation for it’: Stephen (front) with family during their camping trip at Quobba Station, Western Australia
Stephen: I think we planned this trip for a while before we went, but I don’t know because I just turned up. Some of us camped and some stayed in a cabin. It wasn’t exactly camping … They were glamping.
It was a bit weird all of us living together again, but at the same time it was like old habits kicked in. We used to play board games when we were growing up and we did that together on this trip too.
As a kid you don’t really think about cooking or paying for stuff . But now I definitely have a much better understanding of how much it took for my parents to take us on trips as kids, both money- and effort-wise. So I’ve gained a better appreciation for it.
‘He wasn’t too keen on the swag idea’: Stephen with his sister-in-law Erin and brother Joshua, during the family camping trip
Sandy: My kids grew up on the beach so we loved Quobba Station. All my older kids were happy to sleep in their swags with their partners; [my husband] Elliot and I booked a cabin and Stevie was pretty quick to come in the cabin. He wasn’t too keen on the swag idea!
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I think it’s just fantastic going on holiday with them now, I just love it. During one of the days, the boys went on a fishing trip and the girls went to a day spa. [The boys] didn’t catch much so I think by the end of the day, Stevie was wishing he came to the spa.
My parenting philosophy has always been filling my kids’ memory banks. [When] you go to a funeral or you hear someone died, you just think: it’s great to have happy memories of that person when you [were] all together.
‘The craziest thing was definitely the Las Vegas earthquake’: Alex and Radu
Alex has always had a close relationship with her mother and her father, Radu. So it seemed like a natural fit for the trio to holiday together in 2019, when Alex was 21. Over one memorable summer criss-crossing the United States, they experienced one disaster after another – but survived to tell the tale.
Alex: Basically, everything that could go wrong on this holiday went wrong on this holiday. And they were things that none of us could control!
Radu: I mean we caught a lot of bizarre events, really. We experienced the biggest blackout in Manhattan since the NYC blackout of 1977. We saw a tornado driving to Maryland. And we experienced a 15-hour plane delay trying to get to Niagara Falls because they first couldn’t close the plane doors. And then they couldn’t find the pilot.
‘They first couldn’t close the plane doors. And then they couldn’t find the pilot’: Alex, her mother and her father, Radu, after the long journey to Niagara Falls
Alex: The craziest thing was definitely the Las Vegas earthquake. I remember it was the day after the 4th of July, we had gotten back from a day of sightseeing I noticed the bottle on my bedside table shaking, and I thought: “Oh that’s a bit weird.” I really didn’t think anything else of it until I noticed my TV was shaking violently.
My dad runs into the room shouting that there’s an earthquake. I think my body went into shutdown mode and I just followed suit with my dad and stood under my door frame.
Radu: Funnily enough I was on the toilet. And the room had one of those sliding doors. So I’m on the toilet and all of a sudden the sliding door started going left, right, left, right. I knew straight away, it’s not right. I’ve been through massive earthquakes before so I know what it feels like. I quickly grabbed Alex and my wife to make sure they were safe.
Alex: As much as it’s crazy how much bad luck we had with these bizarre holiday experiences, it’s definitely something we laugh about now. We’re not ever going to forget that family holiday. Now I’m not a kid we can actually focus on sightseeing and doing different things together. But I reckon not much had evolved in terms of our relationship because we’ve always been close.
Radu: We’ve holidayed together ever since she was young so it was a gradual thing. It’s not like Alex was five and now she’s an adult. We’ve always had fun together. So why would we stop holidaying together?
Alex: I’ve always been close to my parents, so it only makes sense we have fun travelling together.