Christine Rousseau ran out of diapers in Paris while on vacation and scrambled through rain on an unfamiliar electric scooter to find replacements, confronting language barriers and empty shelves. She continues to travel with her young children, valuing trips as educational opportunities that expose them to different childcare norms and civic differences. She uses examples in Paris and London to teach about crèches and urban funding. Millennials increasingly prize travel as identity-shaping and growth-inducing, often substituting adventure for traditional stability as flights became cheaper and homeownership declined. A 2024 Vox Media poll found 76 percent linked travel to identity and 88 percent to personal growth.
She had run out while on vacation, and her 2-year-old son desperately needed to be put down for a nap. So in the rain, wearing heels, the clock ticking toward a messy and imminent deadline, she hopped on an electric rental scooter that she did not know how to ride. Every place she tried seemed to have fancy face creams but no diapers. She didn't know the French word to ask for them.
She loves seeing them learn, and traveling provides abundant opportunity. In Paris, when the streets seemed empty of toddlers, she got to explain that many young kids there attend crèches, or state-subsidized day care. In London, her son inquired why the streets were so much cleaner than the streets back home in Brooklyn, and that prompted a lesson about civics and city funding.
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