Banning adults-only hotels is insane. Most children are intolerable
We were all children once, I know. But I wouldn't want to go on holiday today with the five-year-old me. And I wouldn't expect any of my friends to either. But the French, it seems, do.
There was a mini furore this week in the European travel industry after it was reported that the French government is planning moves to make it illegal for hospitality venues such as hotels, campsites and restaurants to ban children. Sarah El Haïry, the high commissioner for childhood in France, said that she was ready to resort to new legislation to combat what she deemed a 'no kids trend' in the country.
Her sentiments have been amplified by fears among mummy blogger types that France is getting too much like Belgium where, according to a report by Paris Match, one in 10 restaurants ban children. All of this was described by El Haïry as 'violence against children,' adding: 'A child shouts, laughs and moves … we are institutionalising the idea that silence is a luxury, and the absence of children is a luxury.'
Consider me fully institutionalised.
'Ghoulish crime scene'
We've all been in that queue to board a plane, watching the otherwise blissfully childless stare around, spiralling in panic at the sight of unruly toddlers, hoping they won't get a seat near them. Children do, indeed, shout, laugh and move. But unless you're a doting Italian Nonna, you're probably indifferent to their presence at best. Sometimes they do cute things. A child using an expletive out of the blue makes me guffaw.
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But what children do a lot of the time during their waking hours is annoy you. And how you react to that might be an eyeroll, or an explosive demand that some headphones be used that the whole cabin doesn't have to listen to episodes of Teletubbies.
As a stressed adult, I have a list of things that relax me on holiday, and the presence of children isn't one of them. I sat down to write this shortly after one of my closest friends posted a picture from the resort they are staying at in Lanzarote, Spain. It showed a swimming pool surrounded by hazard warning tape like a ghoulish crime scene. A child had defecated in the water.
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