By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh makes this observation in the mid‑20th‑century context of domestic labor being treated as a private, “natural” duty rather than recognized work. Writing as a wife and mother reflecting on the pressures placed on women in the home, she contrasts paid employment—where weekends, holidays, and vacations are socially sanctioned—with the continuous, on-call nature of childcare and housekeeping. The remark comes from her broader reflections on women’s roles and the need for solitude, rest, and personal time, themes she explored while thinking about how modern life fragments attention and leaves little uninterrupted space for renewal.

Lindbergh’s remark highlights the structural invisibility of domestic labor. By calling mothers and housewives a “vacationless class,” she frames home-making and caregiving as continuous work without the socially recognized boundaries—weekends, holidays, paid leave—that define most paid employment. The quote critiques how modern societies romanticize motherhood while simultaneously denying it the protections and respite granted to other forms of labor. It also implies a gendered inequity: the expectation that women’s work in the home is natural duty rather than labor deserving rest, recognition, and shared responsibility. The phrasing turns a private exhaustion into a public, class-like condition.