"In place of stability, many Millennials came to prize adventure; travel became not just a simple luxury but an alternative source of meaning and identity."

"One 2024 Vox Media poll found that 76 percent of the Zoomers and Millennials surveyed agreed that travel says 'a lot about who they are'; 88 percent said it had spurred their personal growth. 'For previous generations, travel was a status symbol,' Jennie Germann Molz, a College of the Holy Cross sociologist, told me. 'For the Millennial generation it’s more about self-improvement or self-actualization.' As more and more Millennials have started families, many of them are determined to pass down those globe-trotting values—to share the joy of journeying but also to shape their kids into adaptable, savvy people. Sometimes they’re spending money they don’t have; frequently, they’re sacrificing tranquility they may already be short on...."

From "The New Millennial Parenting Anxiety/For those determined to pass down their globe-trotting values, vacations have become ever more ambitious and goal-oriented—and exhausting" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

But: "What kids tend to love most about traveling, anyway, can be found without going far at all. Parents can just keep an eye out for... 'micro-adventures': taking the bus to a free museum, driving two hours to a relative’s home, playing in the woods. Kids need novelty, yes—but when you’re new to existence, everything is new to you.... [One couple anguished over a day of flight delays then] realized that their toddler was having the time of his life: going up and down the escalator, watching the planes take off, marveling at how cool it is that people get to fly in the sky. You have it right, she felt like telling him. I am grumpy. I have forgotten the beauty of the world."