The Whole Kit and Caboodle

There are those who believe that adults are divided into two distinct types: those who have been known to take a trip or two with their parents and those who would rather eat broken glass. For years, the latter tendency dominated conventional wisdom and popular culture.

Extended family adventures were the stuff of slapstick episodes of situation comedies and tales of uneasy cabin-or cottage-bound reunions in which one or several of the participants invariably announced his or her recovered memory of sexual abuse or impending demise.

Not exactly ringing endorsements for family cruise specials or those intergenerational getaways to Club Med. But recently, the reality has quietly slipped away from that cultural standard.

After decades of rebelling against, criticizing, psychoanalyzing and generally distancing themselves from their parents, baby boomers are now boarding cruise ships and flights to Montreal, renting cabins in Yosemite and houses in Tuscany with ... their parents. The travel industry has never seen anything like it. Where once couples ditched the kids at their parents’ before jetting off to Hawaii, now they’re poring over Web sites and travel books, trying to find a destination and accommodation perfect for everyone from the infant to the octogenarian.

According to a recent Better Homes and Gardens Family Vacation Report, grandparents are included in 16% of family vacation trips. Some cruise lines estimate that multigenerational groups account for almost half of their annual business, and summer house rentals, both here and abroad, are at an all-time high, industry experts say.

Even at this year’s Cannes Film Festival the hottest accessory was parents, brought along to enjoy the sights and do nanny duty while the films were screened and the deals were made. “At first people thought I was crazy, traveling with my parents,” says Rena Ronson, co-head of William Morris Agency Independent. “But it’s the perfect solution for me and everyone has fun. Now people come up and tell me I’m their role model.”

Many factors contribute to what is the biggest trend in the industry, says Filomena Andre, director of marketing for L.A.-based Leisure Travel Group. Two-career couples see travel as a stress-reducing necessity rather than a luxury, says Andre, and traveling even internationally is so much cheaper and easier than it was a generation ago. Retirees are younger and more adventuresome--and often have the finances to treat their progeny to that cruise or vacation rental.

But most important, families are so often fractured by physical distance and increasingly busy schedules that vacations provide the only opportunity for that infamous “quality time.”

“People are unwilling to take vacations without their kids now,” says Mike Hannen, co-owner of Marin Travel in the Bay Area, “because they don’t see their kids enough during the week. And so many families are scattered--the grandparents live in one state, all their kids in 10 others. They want to have this experience as a family because they don’t see each other enough.”

All of which sounds very reasonable--if he were talking only about those shining happy families Tolstoy found so boring. Fortunately for literature, and the therapy industry, most of us come from more interesting families. Families with dysfunctions that might not fare so well at high altitudes or over the international dateline. One tries to imagine the Lomans spending Christmas in the Scottish Highlands or Steinbeck’s Trask clan hitting the beach at Waikiki.

On the other hand, it might have been just what they needed. Because as people who have traveled with both parents and children will tell you, it’s not all about socioeconomic factors or time-management issues. It’s about trying to get the family together without everyone going completely and predictably insane. This is the generation that was told “you can’t go home again,” who generally believe family get-togethers are gritted-teeth obligations destined for scenes of drunken accusations over the pie racks and mental breakdowns in the converted rec room.

“For certain more prickly baby boomers, going back home and staying doesn’t seem to be working,” says Culver City-based Susan LaTempa, a longtime travel writer and co-author of “The Unofficial Guide to Traveling California With Children.” “They seem to prefer neutral ground.”

Neutral ground as in: not the house in which you first encountered puberty. Be it in a hotel, cabin or Parisian apartment, the bed is not the same one on which you nursed your first heartbreak or dreamed dreams that remain unfulfilled. The kitchen is not haunted by all your old food issues or struggles with maternal control. Chores too are now unassigned and therefore communal, giving the family a chance to renegotiate the entire power structure.

All of which means there is a small but very real chance you can actually spend time with your parents and siblings without reverting to that sullen, overeating, hyper-sensitive mess so many of us become when visiting the parental homestead.

Furthermore, the excitement of being in a new place, of seeing things for the first time, of planning day trips and finding the best market, may make it possible to have family dialogue that does not revert to the same three unresolved arguments you and your mother (or sister or father) have been having since you were 13. Or since your divorce.

Children, more specifically, grandchildren, can usually defuse any potentially volatile situation. For one thing, if hissy fits and temper tantrums must be thrown during a trip--and it seems to be a law of nature that they must--it is so much more seemly when an actual child is throwing them. The adults seem calm and mature if only by contrast.

“It is very helpful traveling with a 2-year-old,” says Bonnie Nadell, a literary agent who just returned to Los Angeles from two weeks in Canada with her parents, her husband and said 2-year-old, Simon. “Because he could have the meltdowns, leaving me to be perfectly pleasant.”

Nadell had not traveled with her parents since she was a teenager--”when you walk 10 paces behind them and pretend they aren’t there”--but when her folks, who live in New York, proposed the trip, she said sure. And, according to both her and her husband, it was quite successful. Simon was, of course, the natural center of grandparental attention. “It was great, because they didn’t mind sitting in the sandbox with him for three hours,” she says. “For them it was a novelty, fun and charming. So we could leave him with them some days and go off on our own just like grown-ups.”

This generation of grandparents is also a different breed. They’ve been dealing with the vagaries of their boomer kids for years now, and they know that the traditional pilgrimage mentality, the one that required those annual summers in Indiana or airport-endurance holiday trips back East, are probably not going to go over well with their over-scheduled sons and daughters. It’s often the grandparents who propose, and pay for, those two weeks in Ireland, that holiday in Hawaii.

LaTempa, who has traveled many miles with her two daughters, now teens, and her mother, points out that the older and younger generations often share the same energy limits and sleep requirements, making them the perfect companions. “Grandparents are perfect at naptimes because they rarely mind going back to the hotel to lay down for an hour or two,” she says.

Siblings, many of whom are separated by time and distance, are also finding unexpected pleasure in traveling together. It’s always a revelation to discover that your baby brother, who you vaguely knew was an executive somewhere, can handle a misplaced reservation with efficiency and aplomb.

But the real beauty of the family vacation is that, unlike Passover or Thanksgiving dinner, it’s strictly voluntary. If you really don’t get along with your family, don’t vacation with them; anyone with a half-decent imagination can get out of an extended trip that involves getting children on a plane or a variety of expenses. And if you find yourself forced to surrender precious vacation time for a truly unwanted trek with the in-laws, well, you may have larger problems than bad extended-family relations.

Still, even those who might shiver at the thought of two weeks visiting with the clan on Long Island often discover an intimacy born in travel that is not found otherwise. Those quiet conversations that evolve on a car trip, those memories that surface and are actually given voice while staring out at a strange sea or through the window of a train, the giddy laughter that inexplicably answers an attempted argument or a botched plan.

Away from the agitated touchstones of childhood and the constant interruptions of adulthood, things that happen seem somehow less fraught, and companionable silence is possible. As your shoulder brushes your mother’s during a walk down a far-away path, you might realize that she is a person walking through life just as you are.