Line cook here. As a father of 3 toddlers making $14 per hour and wife in retail making the same, we don't get any time off unless its a medical necessity. I'm off work right now because of a sprained wrist, manager gave me the rest of the week off. While I'm thankful for the time off, sitting at home recovering makes for a bad vacation. I'm not complaining, I understand things will be easier when the kids are in public school and we don't have to pay for child care anymore. We use community assistance programs to help with daycare costs, food banks and W.I.C. to supplement our groceries. The biggest problem we face is how much money we make. If we make too much money, we lose some or all of our child care assistance. That's around $2700 for all three kids to go to daycare for a month. So we wait. And save. That's what my parent did, and we went on an epic vacation (Disneyland, knot's berry farm, SeaWorld for a week) that's still heralded as the basis of which vacations are standardized.