Insulting other posters is not allowed outside of the Pit. Calling the OP a “tired old hag” is an insult.
I recommend you read the stickies at the top of the forum in ATMB if you’re unclear on what the rules for this message board are. Further questions about the rules should be posted in ATMB.
People with kids like their kids. In their mind, “going to the beach with baby” is waaaaaaay more fun than plain old going to the beach. Yes, there they have to make acommodations, but it’s what you do with people you love. Think of an elderly family member you have loved. What would you give to have a special vacation with them before they pas, even if that vacation is just sitting on the porch of a beach cottage reminiscing? Sure, you miss out on the skydiving and museums, but you get so many special memories.
Logistically, for most people, i you go on vacation, you gotta bring the kids. If they have a couple kids, they are looking at 8-10 years with small children. That’s a long time to expect people to go without a vacation.
People have kids later and are smarter about it these days The have the money to take real vacations with the kids. For many people, a week with the fam on the beach in Hawaii is not a big deal, it’s a standad annual getaway. Anyway, abeach vacation is much easier than a city vacation with small children.
I never called the OP a tired old hag. You infered that. I was just making a comment.
What time period are you thinking of? Could it be more a function of where you grew up and, perhaps, your social class than the time?
I’m 41, my oldest sibling is 51. We rarely went on vacation when we were growing up, but our parents never went on vacation without us, even for a long weekend. We loaded up our battleship-sized Plymouth station wagon with toys and pillows and an ice chest full of milk and sandwiches, and we hit the highway. My husband is 53 and his parents always took the whole crew (five kids) to a beachside cabin every summer, and to a mountain cabin most winters. My mother-in-law has told me stories of trying to get cloth diapers to dry in rainy weather in a drafty cabin that couldn’t keep the damp out.
My husband and I have only taken one short trip alone without the boys since our oldest son was born. Both boys made their first transatlantic trip before they were a year old. It just doesn’t seem natural to us - we had kids because we wanted to be with them.
This is my philosophy of life. So far, so good.
As a parent and a cat lover, I assure you the comparison is invalid. First, the stress for the cat will be greater if it is forced to travel than if it stays home. The reverse is almost certainly true for an infant, unless they will be left behind with someone who is already a regular day-to-day caregiver. Babies may mind the temporary discomfort of take-off and landing, but everything else is just fine as long as mom is nearby. In fact, the motion and vibration of the plane is apt to be soothing to a human baby.
Second, while there might be some “danger” for the cat, a baby doesn’t face the same situation. What kind of danger are you positing? Such a high level of stress that health is impacted? Someone forgets to pressurize the cargo hold, or accidentally stows the cat in the unpressurized section? The cat escapes and runs away in terror, never to be seen again? None of these scenarios applies to a baby.
Besides which, the experience is going to be different for the separated parent than it is for the separated pet owner. Sure, you’ll miss your pet while you are gone, and wonder if it misses you. This is NOTHING!!! compared to how a loving parent may feel if they leave a child behind. And I say this as a feline-lover who has been known to leave 5 pages of single-spaced instructions behind for a cat-sitter, and think of my cats constantly while I am gone from them. Still: Not. The. Same.
Finally, it is probably fairly easy to board your cat or find a cat-sitter. Finding someone you trust to take care of your baby while you are gone is another matter entirely. If you don’t already have a doting grandparent or helpful sibling nearby, you won’t have the option of"baby boarding" in a facility similar to a kennel.
Aside from that, your observations are skewed. You only noticed when you saw a woman doing what seemed to you to be unpleasant baby care. Some of the happy-looking women you saw on your vacation, walking blissfully on the beach or enjoying the sunset, may have been mothers getting a little R&R while dad was taking over child-care duties.
They’re coming in to get the fake birth certificates. You know, in case Junior ends up going into politics. 
My wife and I have been together almost 20 years and we now have two kids, 6 and 3. Before kids (BK) we travelled quite a bit and continued doing so after we had kids (AK). It’s different, but every bit as enjoyable.
For example, we had BK trips to Paris - visiting the Louvre, long walks on the Seine, fancy dinners. AK it might be long walks around the city, playing in parks, or browsing farmers markets for fresh fruit or great cheese.
Both great experiences that I will always remember!
Well, those moms might be having a blast at that moment, it may be true, but that might not mean that overall the trip overall was wonderful and better for being with the kids. Sometimes (don’t tell!) I would use baby as an excuse to get some alone time after a day of busy activities and too much people. Sitting in the car with just baby and me was just the thing for this classic introvert!
Other times is was hard, sure. Getting the baby or kids to sleep in a hotel was always a challenge for our family. But on balance the trips were a blast, often because of, not despite having my kids around. Even fussy toddlers and sullen pre-teens. The fact is, we enjoy spending our lives including our kids, even if it means everything isn’t always smooth. On balance, life’s been better for sharing it with the kids.
One of my favorite memories is knowing to the minute when my son became a tween. We were on vacation in the Berkshire mountains and nearby they were having a demonstration of Shaker music I wanted to go to. My sweet, little accommodating boy ROLLED HIS EYES (I know- the horror! :D, but it was my first eye-roll!) at my suggestion. I was a bit annoyed, but now I find it hysterical because I can clock the day, time and place he became a tween. Even the annoying stuff at the moment becomes great stories later on.
The bottom line- it’s challenging at any age and each option has it’s own challenges. Bringing them (logistics), leaving them (finding a trusted sitter and all the planning that goes into leaving your kids with someone else for a while), choosing not to travel until their older (that’s no fun) etc. When you have kids you accept that it’s all going to be compromise. But that’s ok, because it all works out.
I think curlcoat may have a point here. I have also noticed extremely young children on outings they couldn’t possibly appreciate fully. I think its an offshoot of that misguided “Mozart Effect”-expose your infant to sophisticated culture and places, and they will somehow absorb that culture and advance much faster than other children. Well, babies aren’t just Small Adults. Their brains are still developing and can take only so much detail before overloading. Their eyes aren’t as well-developed as ours and can’t see the details the way we can. Their hearing, well…they’re still working on telling Mommy from Daddy, so that movie you take them to is just one overlong mess of flashing lights and garbled noise to them, that museum portraits you are carrying them through are just a bunch of shapes to them which they will no more remember than the shapes of the benches in front of them, and that beach adventure you bring them on is just too damn noisy and too damn bright for them to appreciate. If you want to go out on what used to be an adult outing, might I suggest that you help revive an industry that used to be a mainstay of teenagers in need of ready cash-hire a babysitter.
I’ve never been to Hawai’i, but when I was nine months old, I attended a wedding in Colorado. People looked at the cute little baby, and said to Mom and Dad “Oh, now we know why you haven’t been hiking lately”.
Um, no. They’d not been hiking lately because they’d moved in successful pursuit of gainful employment.
Well, I really dunno. Could it be because that “someone” has decided to use some disposable income on a vacation? And that “someone” happens to have a familiy? And that “someone” - for some weird, weird reason I cannot fathom¹ - thinks that it would be nice to go as a family instead of leaving Mom at home with the baby? Naaah, it can’t be.
FYI: In some regions of Europe, couples even bring their children when they go to a restaurant. Because they think that when you’re a family, you do things together. Yes, I know. Shocking, ain’t it?
¹ For those of you who didn’t understand it: Sarcasm warning!
ETA:
You know, I think this illustrates pretty well that you live in another world than some others of us do…
My mom took me on vacations to Hawaii and Australia when I was less than a year old, along with my two then-teenage siblings. Now my reaction is “Well, gee, thanks for taking me on these awesome trips when I was barely out of the womb, instead of at a time in my life when I could actually remember and appreciate them.”
Please do not get personal when you debate this topic. Discuss the topic-not the poster.
This. I have no memories of the cultural trips me parents took me on when I was an infant.
Point taken
What about THEIR memories … or don’t those count?
Well, we do want to keep Pele happy now, don’t we?
Right. The OP was asking what the meaning was to the moms who looked like they were getting nothing good from having their baby along. I know I was trying to answer from the parent’s perspective, that having my babies on those trips enriched it, or at least made it possible for me to have a trip. My baby was content during the trip and I get to have a store of great memories.
Not to mention the fact that my now 16 year old son likes to look at photos of the trip he took at 6 mos and 18 mos old and hear stories about it. And we took he and his sister on other trips as they got older that they do remember.