"Welcoming families is not marketing, but a societal choice.”
Some government officials in France want to ban adult-only resorts and hotels, calling them discriminatory.
The conversation began during a roundtable held earlier this year by the French government’s Minister Delegate for Children and Families, Sarah El Haïry, who warned that such resorts were “not part of [French] culture, not our philosophy and not what we want to see as the norm in our country.”
According to El Haïry, the practice of prohibiting children restricts their civil rights and functionally also excludes their parents, which she says is dividing French society and putting enormous pressure on parents.
RTL France notes that the child-free trend among hotels and resorts originated mainly in Anglo-Saxon parts of Europe and areas around the world popular with visitors from those countries and is not yet widespread in France, but it’s the growing popularity of such resorts that is the source of concern for El Haïry and Socialist French Senator Laurence Rossignol, who introduced a bill proposing a ban in May.
A small number of resorts and hotels have restrictions on children in France—by some estimates fewer than 5%, compared with neighboring Belgium, where one in ten restaurants prohibit young children. Two years ago, the Dutch holiday airline Corendon Airlines introduced very small “child-free zones” onboard long-haul flights between Amsterdam and Curaçao.
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The practice of adults-only resorts (or adults-only areas within resorts) has been around for decades, particularly in Mexico, Central America, Thailand, and Greece.
El Haïry further warns that the trend could have a chilling effect on parents who are hesitant to take their children out in public or feel compelled to put screens in front of their children in order to keep them quiet.
Trade union leaders pushed back on the proposed bill, saying that the market is currently small and that putting restrictions on businesses could compromise France’s competitive position in the worldwide inbound tourism market.
Perspectives on the place of children—particularly small children—in the public sphere vary from country to country. French child-rearing in particular has been the subject of numerous books and articles over the past decade, as overwhelmed American parents wonder if there’s a magic antidote to the crushing expectations they face. While France isn’t a monolith when it comes to parenting, French children by and large tend to sit quietly through marathon dinner parties (without screens) and are raised from their earliest years with the firm understanding that adult conversations and activities are not to be disrupted.
The proposal has spurred debate across Europe, from those who feel they have a right to child-free spaces—particularly if they’re recovering from the loss of a child or the inability to conceive, to others who argue that children have as much right to public facilities as adults.
In the United States, laws regulating the ability to admit or ban children from establishments primarily concern keeping children out of establishments for their own protection, according to government standards, like barring children from bars or nightclubs. There are also adults-only resorts such as wellness spas or adults-only pools or areas of certain resorts, like the adult pool at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea or the “toptional” 21+ Moorea Beach Club at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
Senator Rossignol’s bill faces an uphill battle, scheduled for debate and revisions in both the Senate and the National Assembly. Politicians could either pass the bill or decide the question must be posed to the voters in the form of a referendum.
Alternatively, El Haïry also introduced a designation meant to reward establishments that are deliberately child-friendly, offering child pricing, having children’s events, and containing suitable facilities for children of all ages.
“The choice of families’ is a cry from the heart,” she said in a statement. “We say to the families of France, ‘Here, your children have a place.’ Welcoming families is not marketing, but a societal choice.”
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