Those who never have done it can have no concept of what it`s like, and those who have done it can`t begin to describe it.
For those who do choose to travel in a car full of kids-and their numbers are growing at equal pace with two-career parenthood-the Embassy Suites hotel chain is offering a haven, at least on weekends.
Embassy Suites, which has acquired the Park Suites chain to raise the number of its hotels to 100, earlier this month unveiled a national ''family friendly'' program named after cartoon character Garfield, the company`s promotional ''spokescat'' since 1986.
Under terms of ''Garfield`s American Adventure,'' children checking into 1 of the 72 participating Embassy Suites hotels for weekends with their parents get a royal welcomed.
Gift packs at check-in time include T-shirts, ''Garfield'' magazines, playing cards, postcards, bookmarks, maps of area attractions, discount coupons on everything from toys to cruises and entertainment and a game card giving each child a shot at a $10,000 college scholarship.
Embassy Suites will publicize its program by distributing teaching guides for history and geography to 10,000 elementary schools nationwide, and next year with Garfield shows in more than 100 shopping malls.
At 25 of the hotels, including the Embassy Suites, 600 N. State St., Chicago, parents also are given a discount rental on a video camera with free tape to record their trip. As standard policy, made-to-order breakfasts are free for the whole family (as are evening cocktails for parents).
The ultimate service to the childbound is to be found at only three hotels-in New York, Palm Beach Shores, Fla. and on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
For children 3 to 13, New York, Palm Beach Shores and Maui also boast Kids Clubs, day-care centers equipped with arcade-caliber video games, indoor basketball, VCRs with tapes and activities designed to keep the children busy while Mom and Dad go shopping or to the theater. Rates are $5 an hour, capped at $20 for the whole day. The New York hotel rents cellular phones to parents so they can keep in touch with their children through the day.
Hotels in the chain are essentially autonomous and cannot be required to offer the Kids Club. But Mary Lee Broder, manager of program development for Embassy Suites, said at an press conference in New York Oct. 15 that the corporation will attempt to get all of them involved.
- The U.S. Travel Data Center in Washington, D.C., said the number of business trips-155.4 million-was down last year from 1989, but that the number of travelers was up, to more than 35 million adults.
Broder said travelers ''increasingly are taking their children along,'' a lifestyle change that makes the Kids Club concept a natural.
''Eighty percent of all vacations today involve at least one child, and last year as many as 6 million children went along on business trips,'' Broder said.
''Women business travelers now make up one-third of all business travelers, and (some) parents today take their children everywhere with them- in business, pleasure or both.
But will notoriously independent hotels in the chain have the will or the heart to take the plunge on childproof rooms and lavish day-care centers for their guests?
''We`re probably not going to get into that, at least for the next year,'' said Collette Radcliffe, general manager at Denver`s downtown Embassy Suites, which is participating in the ''American Adventure'' promotion.
An Arizona Embassy Suites executive, who asked not to be identified, declined to go that far.
''Families that come here on weekends are coming because we offer a much lower weekend rate than we do during the week, and `Garfield`s American Adventure` is priced so that to give away some of the things they`re giving away, you have to have a higher weekend rate,'' the executive said.
Travel Editor Alfred Borcover, whose column normally appears on this page, is on vacation.