Thomas_R wrote:
Your life entirely depends on somebody else, at least during the first stage of flight.
I would not say “entirely” but yes, there is an additonal risk attached.
Thomas_R wrote:
Let me guess: The infamous airfield of Thannhausen? ;-)
Correct! 
We stayed in a tent on the airfield enjoyed the burgers at the lake. My daughter and I even did a wakeboarding course together – a fantastic trip!
Supersonic wrote:
I guess it all has to do with that irrational feeling that flying is potentially “unsafe”
While it’s irrational, lot of it comes from clear sources:
I think it’s worth networking with pilots who fly family and pilots who can talk non-aviation
And less glider tugging 
Too many men choose a woman who doesn’t like their main hobby
Women almost never make that mistake.
Either women like flying (or quickly start to like it), or they don’t.
My experience is a bit different. My wife is happy to fly if it’s to go somewhere or for a sightseeing trip. But flying for its own sake (“$100 hamburger”) doesn’t interest her at all. She does however encourage me to fly, in fact I wouldn’t have got a new (to me) plane without her encouragement.
I’ve not run into drama with family life and hobbies that many describe here. My father started flying when I was seven and mother helped me push my first motorcycle home from where I had bought it at age nine. This got me off on the right foot
We don’t have children in my family, my wife already had one which for her stopped the urge for more, and I never thought the world needed more of them but anyway she herself wants to fly more. She’s had had motion sickness since childhood but slowly, slowly ‘we’ cured it when motorcycling (where it was never a huge issue, oddly enough), when driving and now we’re slowly, slowly doing the same with flying. It’s working but it takes a determined lady to do it, and that character is one reason I married her.
@Fernando, fantastic story.
Frans wrote:
I’m actually a bit depressed by some reactions here. As if it’s normal that a wife or husband can force you to stop one of your favorite hobbies, in this case flying. Maybe it’s because I’m a younger generation as most here, but I think this is an outdated model in the modern world.
Frans, I don’t know how old you are. I’m 37 which is still well below the average on here I’d say.
I want to clarify that my wife did never make any attempt to “force me to stop my favourite hobby” to use your own words. She was actually genuinely sympathetic when I told her about the closure of my current rental outfit. She has been sitting in their C172 only a few months prior, on the ground and in the hangar but it was the first time she came that close toand she showed genuine effort to overcome her fear of flying GA, which had only manifested after she became a mother – a few months after I began PPL training.
I agree with you that it is not “normal” in a modern relationship that one partner can simply force the other to abandon an activity unless that is causing significant harm to the relationship at large. But this is a seldom occurrence anyways.
Much stronger and less sinister but equally disruptive is the “force of the everyday stress”, with which I mean that the cumulative time (and money) requirements of managing work, kids, household, partnership etc. is often so overwhelming – especially for families with young kids – that all other activities suffer massively ot have to be temporarily abandoned. This is also why the typical age where all these requirements are compounded, at about 30 to 50, is also called “rush hour of life”.
It appears legitimate to me that any partner can reasonably expect from the other that they focus their time and effort on joint endeavours.
It is also – medically speaking.- natural that women become more risk averse once they have children. The same applies to men too, by the way, but that is less often talked about perhaps due to societal expectations to the contrary. And GA is a risky activity at least comparing to many other hobbies.
MedEwok wrote:
It appears legitimate to me that any partner can reasonably expect from the other that they focus their time and effort on joint endeavours.
Which is exactly why we sold the 4-seater 177RG after our unplanned third kid came along. It took me a few years until I found the right airplane but four years later I found our current P210.
It is very difficult for me to self-justify (let alone justify to others) having the six-seater, relatively gas-guzzling 210 just to bore some holes in the sky on my own or with a friend…I make it a point to make flying plans with the family or friends. Admittedly it is increasingly difficult to get to put everyone together in the airplane, but that has little to do with the airplane itself…
That is also the same reason why I never considered moving to less resource-consuming Ultralights or LSA or some other two-seater. For me, it cannot be just dad’s hobby.
Having said that, I have a PPL-friend whose wife does not approve of his flying, will not allow him to fly with the kids. He just takes it as his personal hobby.
He may as well fly an LSA or ultralight rather than his current club-steed: a C172 .
So not a one-size-fits-all idea, it seems…
Then he complains that he finds it hard to find time for his flying away from his young family…oh well !
Peter wrote:
That’s because you choose the 2nd wife (or a GF) for her acceptance of you as you are.
I was chosen exactly because what I was – simply a matching of characters. Since that was during the time I wasn’t able to afford flying, I was constantly pushed by my wife to renew my licence and start flying again, regardless raising children together and working a lot.
@Fernando you must have spent at least the equivalent of 10 flying hours’ cost on Valentine’s day. Congrats!
My wife was also always very supportive and still is. She saw the need for me to develop a passion and a perfect remedy from the stress that work sometimes brings. Flying or even preparing to go fly and afterwards ponder on your mistakes is the perfect way to completely disconnect from everyday’s problems and I think she saw that it was time very well invested. Like most other wives, zero interest in flying, unless when occasionally going somewhere or ‘forcing’ me to go fly with friends or the kids’ friends. In other words, without flying I might have become a grumpy old bugger, and would not have met so many other pleasant freaks
