I want to drink Chablis without listening to a six-year-old argue about sunscreen | Angela Mollard

I happily raised two children and have earned the right to relax without other people’s kids, writes Angela Mollard.

Ten years.

That’s all I’m asking for.

Having raised two children to adulthood and with great enthusiasm for grandchildren in the future, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that, right now, I do not want to holiday with other people’s children.

Not my friends’ children. Not strangers’ children. No children. I want – actually, I need - a decade of childfree excursions and adventuring.

Which is why I was more than a little irritated as I tried to make this point to Camille, a tour operator who was helping me book a hiking holiday in France next year.

“I don’t want to go during the French school holidays,” I told her.

“Oh, but that is ze best weather,” she told me.

I realise that but I would rather forego a few sunshine days rather than find myself sharing a little village bistro with a wailing toddler or a swimming pool with recalcitrant triplets.

So I told Camille the truth: “I want to holiday sans enfants.”

Honestly, you’d have thought I’d said that French champagne was a bit average and

Italian prosecco was more to my liking.

Angela Mollard. I do not want to holiday with other people’s children. Photographer Steven Chee

All I want is 10 days of quiet. I don’t want kids whingeing on the hiking trails or throwing pain au chocolat in the auberge. After a year of Zoom calls and deadlines I want the kind of holiday where I can hear my own thoughts.

But apparently this perfectly reasonable desire now makes me some sort of moral outlaw. Because in France politicians are debating whether child-free resorts are discriminatory. When did opting for silence over shrieking become a human rights violation?

Oh the irony. The country that loathes foreigners, has no issue with its presidents’ extramarital affairs or dog poo on pavements yet exhibits the sort of blanket hauteur so archly captivated by Philippine Leory-Beaulieu’s character Sylvie in Emily in Paris, is now vive le brats. Seriously, of all the nations to position themselves as Daddy Daycare.

“Children are not troublesome pets,” argues the French socialist senator Laurence Rossignol, who is reportedly planning to introduce a private members bill to make it illegal to ban children from French hotels and campsites.

As someone who distinctly remembers one of my children biting the other so fiercely she left teeth marks in her skin I’d argue that Monsieur Rossignol – is he of the skiwear brand? – has missed the point.

There are plenty of places that happily embrace children from the quiet-as-a-mouse types to the teeth-baring rottweiler variety.

I know because I frequented them for years, actively seeking wipe-down surfaces, a playground, the biggest pool to accommodate inflatables and ready-made friends in the form of other holidaying families.

Looking back, they weren’t exactly “holidays” but a relocation of our domestic chaos with more cramped sleeping arrangements. Incidentally, I have always doubted that the parents in Home Alone left their son Kevin home by accident when they travelled to France.

Three friends enjoying a trip together – with not a child in sight. Picture: iStock

Now I no longer need to travel with rice crackers and a pack of Monopoly Deal cards, I want accommodation where no one is wailing at 5.30am, the pool is not commandeered by a blow-up flamingo and chicken nuggets are pleasingly absent from the menu.

I think it’s genius that when you now book on Japan Airlines you can see a child icon on the seat map showing where kids are located in the cabin and choose your own seat accordingly. And I say that as someone who has happily entertained OPCs (other people’s children) mid-air to give their parent a breather.

Just as you can choose to fly economy, premium or business and you can select a restaurant because of the cuisine it serves, the commercial marketplace is perfectly entitled to offer childfree options.

An adult wishing to drink Chablis away from a six-year-old arguing over wearing sunscreen is not a segregationist. No one is denying anyone else’s humanity, just their proximity.

Hospitality’s very existence is based on giving customers what they seek and if a changing demographic or preference means more people are seeking adults-only options, as is recent trends suggest, then it’s a clear case of supply and demand.

The French can paint us all as discriminatory, they can scowl at our desire to remove ourselves from little Pierre and Celine but if I’m spending my hard-earned Euros then I’ll insist on liberté, équalité and, most of all, tranquillité.

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Originally published as I want to drink Chablis without listening to a six-year-old argue about sunscreen | Angela Mollard