Have Kid, Will Travel: Meet the parents who still like trips

Janis Cooke Newman,Bonnie Wach:

This week the Travel Section kicks off a monthly column dedicated to the idea that just because you've become a parent, it doesn't mean you have to become an armchair (or playground-bench) traveler.

The column will be written alternately by two moms who've refused to let babylust sublimate wanderlust: Bonnie Wach, former editor of Where Magazine, travel book author and a regular contributor to the Chronicle and USAToday.com; and Janis Cooke Newman, a frequent contributor to these pages, as well as to the travel sections of the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News and the Miami Herald. For this first column, Bonnie and Janis write about why - despite the fact that neither can afford to employ Brangelina's nanny staff - they believe in the credo "Have Kid, Will Travel."

Bonnie: Ten minutes into a six-hour flight across the country, with my infant son shrieking in my ear as he yanked the hair of my elderly seatmate and stomped cheerfully on my husband's loins, the words of those sage philosophers, Johnson & Johnson, became painfully prescient: Having a baby changes everything. Especially the part of everything that involved me thinking that kids under 2 in their parents' laps for six hours constitutes a "free" ride.

It occurred to me suddenly that I was anchored to a wailing little ball of carry-on luggage, and that my grand notions of not letting a child get in the way of my travel plans was absurd.

We managed to weather that first bout of turbulence through the good graces of Ernest & Julio Gallo and my seat neighbor's mercifully defective hearing-aid battery, and when I got home, I considered my options: Obviously, I couldn't give up my child, but as a journalist who has dedicated a good part of her career to writing about travel, I was also not willing to give up my traveling.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 29, 2008 12:00 AM
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