Senator Laurence Rossignol says ‘we can’t organise society by separating children off’, as debate grows across the country
Child-free resorts and adult-only hotels are discriminatory, risk creating a society of intolerance and should be banned, a French senator has said, amid a growing debate in France on whether it is inhumane to exclude children from holidays.
“We can’t organise society by separating children off from ourselves in the same way some establishments don’t take dogs,” said Socialist senator and former French families minister Laurence Rossignol. “Children aren’t troublesome pets.”
Last month, the French government’s high commissioner for childhood, Sarah El Haïry – who has warned that adult-only holiday resorts were “not part of [French] culture, not our philosophy and not what we want to see as the norm in our country” – launched a Family Choice award as part of what she called a “fight against the new no kids trend”.
El Haïry called for French parents to vote for their favourite child-friendly locations as a way to “put children back at the heart of public space” and stand up to the adults-only sector. “No way can we let it take hold in our society that children aren’t welcome on a restaurant terrace,” she told Parents magazine.
