Entry four: Dad psychology and The Road Trip

23 Jul 2022

I’m a white middle-class male and I’m here to tell you that the stereotype of the uptight dad trying to make time on a vacation, sitting in the driver’s seat in the driveway, waiting [visibly] impatiently for the family to finish eating / peeing / makeuping is absolutely a thing. I really try not to be that person and I think most of the time I am successful.

When we were driving around, three miles from home, looking for gas station with a working tire inflator, I felt “the feelings” bubbling up inside me. You know what they are: those feelings that say your family is going to miss out on something if you don’t get on the road. That you’ll fall behind the schedule that was designed around avoiding traffic or getting to the restaurant in time or meeting relatives. Then gradually the plan unravels and no one is having fun.1

Prior to our departure- way prior, like, in February, I felt the anxiety starting to creep in. I don’t have a diagnosed anxiety disorder but that doesn’t preclude me from having feelings of anxiety. But I knew I wanted to have fun on this trip and that I wouldn’t live it down if ruined our first big family road trip by being a grouchy ball of nerves. How to achieve it?

Two things in my tool box. One easy, one maybe less-so.

First, the easy one: preparedness. As you may have read, I spent months planning this trip and while I was planning I tried to keep in mind: what if something goes wrong? What’s the fallback plan? Considering those scenarios made me feel more confident.

Second, more challenging: be ready to scrap the plan entirely. Why’s that challenging? Because my solution here was simply to abandon the truck, abandon the camping, get on a plane, and fly to Michigan. And that’s challenging because it’s expensive. We were fortunate to be able to consider this as a fallback plan. It’s not realistic for a lot of folks (and it certainly wouldn’t be trivial for us- it would mean a lean fall and winter!) and is definitely a privilege to even consider as an option.2

Having those strategies in my tool box and going into the whole thing with open eyes made all the difference. Which is not to say that I didn’t still have anxiety (had to periodically pry my gaze away from that damnable transmission temperature gauge) about all of the stuff that I already mentioned, but I worked hard to balance that with an attitude of, “we’re having an adventure and we’ll enjoy ourselves because we’re together.”

Ultimately, we didn’t need to engage any of the emergency plans. The first day of driving was indeed stressful and I am truly grateful that we had the opportunity to connect with a friend and enjoy some time away from camp so that I could return and get my head straight before the next day’s drive. I slept well that night and woke up the next morning with the mindset that I worked so hard to achieve: I would enjoy this trip with my family, be a team player, and accept that if things totally went off the rails (as long as everyone was safe), we’d still have an adventure.


  1. The grownup way of dealing with this, of course, is to admit that you’re having feelings of anxiety and talk to your family about that, rather than acting like an ass. 

  2. Have a good, long think about the stress that people in poverty experience.