My parents, who were both born in the 1950s on Long Island, did not grow up skiing. When my siblings and I came along, they insisted this was something that they were going to give to their children.

For much of my youth, we spent the post-Christmas/pre-New Year’s vacation up in New Hampshire or Vermont. This would be supplemented by a handful of day trips to mountains in the Delaware Water Gap or the Catskills during January, February, and March. We’d wake up at some crazy hour, sleep in the car, and spend the day on the manufactured snow-laden slopes.

My dad, who has had bad knees since the Carter administration, spent all day camping out in the lodge. As an accountant, the winter was his busy season. In retrospect, driving 3+ hours so his kids would be occupied for the day was probably his way of ensuring he’d be able to get work done uninterrupted on a Sunday. My mom, to give her extreme credit, took lessons and tried to learn. Not an easy feat in one’s 40s and 50s.

I’ve been thinking about this premeditated family tradition. Growing up, I certainly had the snow bug. I absolutely loved skiing, so much so that in high school one of my friends and I got plugged into day trips to various mountains in Vermont sponsored by our local ski and snowboard shop.

If you asked the 10th grade version of me—bopping to Jack’s Mannequin on my iPod at 5:00 a.m. while I was on a bus headed up to Okemo—I would have told you that skiing was a huge part of my identity, on par with my beautiful, billowing hair that I’d have no idea would be gone in a decade.

***

Fast forward to adulthood. I’ve gone skiing three days total. My wife, to the chagrin of my parent’s investment, did not grow up skiing.

In a few years, my two girls will be at the age when my brother and I first learned. We’ve never really talked about it seriously, but in casual conversation I’ve noticed that my wife and I have different perspectives on the matter.

While I’d love my girls to learn how to ski (or snowboard. but for real, ski), I’m vocal about the fact that I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze. The economics of skiing have changed quite a bit over the past two decades; single day lift tickets, the lifeblood of people learning how to ski, are up approximately 40 million percent. Now that the ski industry has consolidated to a handful of corporate overlords, they’ve spent years making season passes the only legitimate non-ripoff option. The major caveat of course being that you actually spend the entire winter skiing.

My wife is of the mindset that I imagine my parents were; it’s something that she wants to give to our kids. The inertia of life is that your children are always supposed to have more opportunities than you did. Additionally, we live in a town where some people tone-deafly talk about skiing as if it’s as commonplace as getting a Greek salad. Nobody wants to feel like they’re on the outside looking in. Nobody especially wants their children to have that feeling.

***

The reality is that being a ski family is not the same as it was two decades ago: while it was certainly a recreational luxury back then, the level of luxury has changed drastically.

I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing (it’s obviously bad), but it’s important to remember that due to good old supply and demand, changing societal tastes, and a bunch of other stuff I’m probably not taking into account, the status surrounding any given good or service is never really fixed. Some examples:

-Lobster, famously, was viewed as “poverty food” before it became beholden to Market Price.

-Aluminum used to be more valuable than gold before it became an afterthought in our pantry.

-Reserving space on a pickleball court used to be the easiest thing in the world.

We all want what’s best for our kids, but it’s important to remember that the world we grew up in is not the world today. Skiing is fun, but my Older Daughter would definitely return from a $5k+ trip talking exclusively about how great it was to drink hot chocolate.

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