Tina, you and I are on the exact same wavelength, and I only hope that our babble helps out s_hoot!!! The whole thing about cleaning out the gutters nailed it for sure!
We will do what we love for as long as we love it for. Travelling is our passion, as changing diapers and paying a mortgage is a passion for someone else!
cruisegirl/tway - does it have to be that clear cut? - Isn't there a happy medium somewhere between constant travelling, and settling down and going the "conventional" route of 2.2 kids, big mortgage and a new car every two years until you're 60?
Why fall into the trap of thinking you have to completely buy into one extreme or the other?
Most people in the west are pretty fortunate in that they have a reasonable amount of choice in the type of career and lifestyle they want for themselves and if you really want, you can compromise and have the best of both worlds.
i see where stoosh is going, i would like a family and kids and stuff as well, but dont want to compromise all my travels. is there anybody out there who is married, with kids, whose still out there, jumping country to country, never staying in one place too long? still just living the adventure of it all i guess? and how do you do it? obvisouly you have to have a job of some sort for income, unless you are just rich and dont have to worry about money, but you dont count then. can there be any sort of happy medium?
Well i guess thiis forum answers your question...your not alone at all.
I was having a laugh about this exact topic yesterday,i just got back from a trip to South Africa last week and have been doing some work with my dad.
I got a lift back with my dads bosses dads who starts lecturing me that its time to get married and buy a house....i met the guy once for 5 minutes 6 years ago.
Thats why i travel.
Quoting stoosh
cruisegirl/tway - does it have to be that clear cut? - Isn't there a happy medium somewhere between constant travelling, and settling down and going the "conventional" route of 2.2 kids, big mortgage and a new car every two years until you're 60?
Another good point! I heard one of my cousins say years ago, after she had her first kid: "Well, I'm a mother now - I have to act like one." That meant she was giving up the 'fun' stuff in life: travel, going out, seeing friends, and so on (she rebelled a few years later out of, I assume, self-repression). I remember thinking that was a horrible approach to life - and that, if and when I had kids, I'd want to take them out and show them the world.
Hopefully we can find a happy medium. And why not - lots of people have done it! They just faced up to the tsk-tsks of naysayers and went ahead and did it, anyway.
I go for a holiday almost once every 3 months albeit short holidays.
I guess the main reason I travel so often and so much it's because the need of getting away from this stressful job which I absolutely have no passion for. I work from 0830 to 2030 everyday Mondays to Fridays. I work some weekends too and there were times that I have worked for a stretch of 19 days without any rest days in between.
I am approaching 30 and have just managed to buy myself an economical car. I am worse off than probably most of you because I am an Asian. Here, society's got a totally warped sense of idea of how we are supposed to study, study, study and then work, work, work all our lives.
Yet, when I come back from my travels I get envious looks everywhere and they dont understand how I could do it. I encourage them and tell them with a little planning, everyone could do it because travelling "sets you free". You come back with different perspective of everything but most of all...you discover the meaning behind having a life and living it to the fullest.
However, chin up and get through your studies...if anything at all, your degree will give you the means and money to travel more! 
S_hoot, I think you would be hard pressed to find too many people who have the 3 kids and are still just living the backpacker lifestyle, rugrats in tote. Unless, of course, as you mentioned, they have the luxury of an unlimited bank account back home.
You do, however, quite often see a families backpacking together. I remember seeing a German family in a hostel in Buenos Aires. I think the kids were probably between 8-12. Each had a little backpack and they were traveling South America with their parents. I also met a Swedish family in Australia (w/grown kids) who were traveling Australia for 2 months as a way of bringing the family back together. Another example, my parents moved my family out to the middle of the South Pacific for a year when I was 7 years old. It still is probably the most incredible experience of my life, but I can't say I wasn't happy to make it home after the year.
I think the message here is that by no means do you have to stop being a traveler once you establish a family. However, I would imagine that in almost all cases, a "home life" is quite necessary and beneficial.
I don't want to be funny. Why is it that travelled people are the only ones who can actually think and can make some kine of sense.
If that isn't an argument for travelling I don't know what is.
Quoting tway
Quoting stoosh
cruisegirl/tway - does it have to be that clear cut? - Isn't there a happy medium somewhere between constant travelling, and settling down and going the "conventional" route of 2.2 kids, big mortgage and a new car every two years until you're 60?
Another good point! I heard one of my cousins say years ago, after she had her first kid: "Well, I'm a mother now - I have to act like one." That meant she was giving up the 'fun' stuff in life: travel, going out, seeing friends, and so on (she rebelled a few years later out of, I assume, self-repression). I remember thinking that was a horrible approach to life - and that, if and when I had kids, I'd want to take them out and show them the world.
Hopefully we can find a happy medium. And why not - lots of people have done it! They just faced up to the tsk-tsks of naysayers and went ahead and did it, anyway.
There must be a happy medium somewhere, but do realize that a lot of us that have been responding are people that get up and leave for weeks, months, or years at a time. Which is not the way to raise a family. Hence the limbo a lot of us are in.
Ok, so there has to be someone out there who has found or thinks they have found this "happy medium".
Is there anbody who thinks they may be able to give some words of advice of maybe an ideal travel life you have that includes, significant other, kidos, job...that fullfills your travel needs? There has got to be someone out there like us who is "happy" and getting everything out of life that we are all so searching to find. all i need is one good story.