On Petersfield station, southbound side, there’s a huge billboard advertising a tropical holiday with a photo of a beautiful couple joyfully splashing each other in the water. I walked past it, stopped, walked back and stared. ‘Adults-only holiday,’ read the billboard. ‘Entirely child-free.’
But this wasn’t ‘adults only’ in the 20th-century sense: getting frisky with strangers after a pink gin and an all-you-can-eat buffet. What was being sold was a holiday guaranteed to contain not a squeak of any disgusting child, and the whole tone of the advert was one of joyful relief: At last! Just what we’ve all always wanted, but never dared to admit! The beautiful couple could spend their days scrolling freely on their expensive phones, undisturbed by the excited shouts of infants. And no need to worry about a depressing return to a world full of kids, because as the fertility crisis has grown across the developed world, so, in its shadow, an entire industry of child-free activities has also begun to flourish. There are child-free restaurants, child-free gardens, child-free hotels, all advertising themselves with the same indefinably unpleasant air.
This isn’t a desire for peace. This is a dislike of children for being children, no matter how they behave
