Today, my son, who is the father of two absolutely gorgeous girls ( I'm not biased at all), spends the best part of every Saturday looking after his girls while their mum works.
He takes them to the park (my father never took me to the park - off course that's not to say he was a bad father, because he wasn't) and he takes them for fluffies (these weren't even heard of when I was little).
He takes them all over the place.
And he's not the only dad out there doing things with their children.
You see them everywhere. It's fantastic.
There's a photo of my son that I love. He's standing on the beach talking to another bloke, both of them holding little pink buckets.
Not a kid in sight. It makes me smile.
He told me recently that he used to hang out at the pub with his mates, now he hangs at playgrounds with them.
I asked my mum how she coped on her own all the time with five kids.
"I just had to," she said.
Did it annoy you?
"Yes, sometimes I was so mad I could spit."
I do remember going for Sunday drives sometimes.
Over to Napier to the wharf to look at the boats, a Mr Whippy ice cream was our treat.
We did have a few family holidays when I was older.
A new friend I was talking to about this told me she remembered her parents taking them to Taupo for a weekend.
They said they would take her and her three siblings out for dinner, but they (the children) wanted to have fish and chips and stay in the motel because it was such a novelty.
How times have changed.
There's a lot more to do on the weekends these days, including shopping.
Which leads me to Easter trading.
It's great that the Government is going to look at the laws because they are so confusing.
But do we really need more shopping days?
I certainly don't. It's okay for big retailers who can rotate their staff so everyone gets some holidays off to spend with family and friends.
But I feel for the employees of small retailers who could potentially end up working every public holiday.
They might get a day off during the week but all their family and friends will probably be back at work.
Surely people can organise their shopping to cope with a few days of closed doors.
There's alway house work to do, gardens to tend to, cars to wash ... actually maybe I've changed my mind.
-Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today.
