France's ban on adults-only venues is insanity – most children are intolerable

Telegraph

14-06-2025

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 government on the other side of the Channel 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 Mumsnet 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.
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 so that the whole Eurostar carriage doesn't have to listen to episodes of Gecko's Garage.
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. It showed a swimming pool surrounded by hazard warning tape like a ghoulish crime scene. A child had defecated in the water.
Okay, so these things happen. All kinds of mishaps do. But a place that's adults-only cuts down the risk. And that's not 'violence against children', that's just acknowledging that some people are rubbish parents, and that a lot of non-parents (and indeed parents that I know personally) would rather be unencumbered by the company of kids. It's about choice.
'Weapons-grade self-entitlement'
The hands-down worst experience I've had involving bad parenting on holiday was at Barefoot Havelock in the Andaman Islands last year. There was a table consisting of two or three families, including seven children that should have been put to bed some hours before. They were running around and screaming so much that it felt like a deliberate attempt to bait the other diners.
I hoped things would calm down, or that they'd leave, but the chaos actually escalated. I asked the staff what they thought of all this, and they seemed to think everything was just tickety-boo. Was this an example of 'shouting, laughing and moving'? No. It was weapons-grade self-entitlement. And if hotel management don't have the tact to put a stop to it, they shouldn't invite kids to stay – or, as the French seem to believe, be forced to.
There are anomalies. For every dozen or so tables in a hotel breakfast room occupied by brats hurling food and cutlery around while their parents dissociate as if in a trance, there's a child that can behave without being tranquilised by a digital device. I was having a wildly expensive meal at Vue de Monde in Melbourne this year, and at the next table was a kid sitting enraptured, talking to their parents using their inside voice, asking questions about the food.