This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Monet Hambrick, a 36-year-old travel blogger who shares itineraries and tips for traveling with children on her blog, The Traveling Child. Monet shares two daughters with her husband James Hambrick — Jordyn, who is 10, and Kennedy, who is 8. Monet has been to 50 countries so far in her life, while her daughters have been to over 35. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m a first-generation American. Both of my parents are Jamaican. Because of that, I’ve had a passport since I was young because we would always go back and forth to Jamaica.
Even though I didn’t travel internationally a lot when I was growing up besides Jamaica, I have lots of family all over the United States, so we’d go on tons of road trips.
My husband and I met in college at the University of Florida. We love to travel and have been traveling together since we started dating.
When we had kids, everyone was like, “Oh, you’re never going to be able to travel anymore now that you have kids.”
And we were like, “Have you met us?” This is the lifestyle that we, as husband and wife, created. We wanted to continue that lifestyle whether we had kids or not.
So we did. Our oldest daughter took her first domestic flight at six weeks old, and before she was two, we had gone to Jamaica, Italy, and Greece.
When we had our second daughter, I went on maternity leave because I was working in corporate America at the time. I was like, “Twelve weeks when I don’t have to ask anybody for vacation days? I should probably do something.” We went to Colombia while she was 10 weeks old.
Since then, they’ve been to over 35 countries and six continents.
Children belong in business class like any other passenger who has paid to be there
We’ve only flown business class when we have points to fly business class.
Thankfully, I’ll say my kids, especially at this age, are perfectly fine. People are always complimenting us, like, “Oh my God, they were so good on the flight. I didn’t even realize there were kids here.”
Kids cry on planes sometimes. I’ve definitely been on planes where kids are crying. I put on my headphones.
But kids know how to behave. Kids are not like these weird things that automatically cry.
There are people of every age who do things on planes that we’ll be annoyed with.
There are adults on planes who are drunk or causing issues.
I was actually on a flight when adults were fighting. These were not young people. It was two couples in their 70s fighting, yelling, and screaming at each other. They got kicked off the plane.
The other day, an adult sitting behind me put their bare foot in the space between my seat. I was like, “Why is your foot there? How can you even think that that is appropriate?”
Oftentimes, it’s more comfortable for families to be in business class anyway. You’ll probably have kids making less noise because it’s more comfortable for them.
Thinking that adults own business class is not right. It’s public transportation.
If you don’t want to be around kids, get your own plane.
