Singling out a holiday

We all need a break, but one-parent family holidays rarely involve rest and relaxation, writes SHEILA WAYMAN

We all need a break, but one-parent family holidays rarely involve rest and relaxation, writes SHEILA WAYMAN

CHILDREN ARE demanding travelling companions and family holidays, no matter how blissful, come with a fair share of angst. Rest and relaxation is the last thing on their mind in excitingly unfamiliar surroundings.

For them, swimming pools are there to be enjoyed early and often; choice of restaurants is determined by “do they have chips?”; and bedtime is something to be delayed until their little bodies are consumed by crankiness beyond all reason.

It can be a marathon when shared by two parents but may be totally overwhelming when there is just one – and no companion with whom to toast that post-bedtime peace before it all starts again at six in the morning.

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Finance and fear are the two big issues for one-parent families when it comes to holidays. Considering that you are 4.5 times more likely to live in poverty if you live in a one-parent family, according to a 2006 EU survey on income and living conditions, budgetary problems are widespread and obvious.

What may not be so evident to “smug marrieds” is the fear lone parents have of being the sole adult in charge, away from support systems within the extended family and community.

One south Dublin mother of an eight-year-old girl and seven- year-old boy says she would be afraid to walk down streets that she does not know in the dark with them.

“I would be afraid that I wouldn’t be able to supervise both children at the pool. My daughter swims in the big pool, my son in the small pool, so I can’t be in two places at once.” She also worries about her son going into the male toilets alone.

“I am not great at finding my bearings and I would get lost easily; I am not good at figuring out public transport. God I sound dumb but I am just not confident when I am the only adult,” she explains.

For the last few holidays she has brought a friend who has no children and doesn’t drink. “She is not interested in a party holiday so our family holiday suits us all,” she adds.

Louise O’Neill, who is a single mother from Cabra in north Dublin, had never been away by herself with her eight-year-old daughter Gabrielle until last month. “Usually I am with my parents or my sister or brother,” she says.

But after doing a training course with One Family, a national organisation for one-parent families, she was offered the chance to book a place on its annual holiday in Wexford.

“We are aware people can feel isolated around holiday time, so that is one of the reasons, as a follow-on from our training course, we have a holiday for families,” explains One Family director Karen Kiernan.

Like any traditional time of year, the summer school break can be difficult. “For people who have shared parenting, it is a question of are you going to get a holiday with your children or are you not?” she says.

“Similar to birthdays and Christmas, it is another flashpoint. We encourage people to think ahead and communicate well.”

Kiernan acknowledges that a lot of people feel awkward going on holiday on their own, without another adult, and says they need to think of holidays that would suit their family.

“There isn’t another adult, that’s your reality so how can you make the best of that? What kind of place are you comfortable going to and where might you meet other adults with children?”

Having seen the benefits of being away with other one-parent families, participants in One Family holidays often go on to plan their own trips together.

“It is an important way of breaking down social isolation,” says Kiernan. “It can also save them money, in that they can share resources.”

It is something O’Neill would consider, now that she and Gabrielle have kept in touch with some of the other families they met during the three-day trip to Wexford.

Having initially been “very nervous”, she says: “It was lovely to have so many other single parents; everybody roughly in the same boat. It was great for the children to feel so normal.”

The support of parents for each other was much appreciated, especially by those with very young children. “Having a child on your hip all the time can get to you,” points out O’Neill. “It was great for them to have other parents to take over when they saw them struggling.”

There was a babysitting service available one of the nights and a children’s disco was arranged the other night. It was a real luxury for the parents to dine together and not have a child pestering them every few minutes.

As a lone parent, says O’Neill, “you are basically talking to children all the time and the extent of the conversation goes to what cartoons have been on recently and that kind of thing”.

It was a craving for adult company on holidays, as well as guaranteed companions for her children, that prompted divorcee Chrissie Lewandowski to start organising holidays for single- parent families. It is now a rapidly growing business called Single With Kids, which she runs from an office at her home outside Manchester.

“I had a few holidays which were totally miserable. I decided I wasn’t going to repeat them,” she explains. “I went on a camping holiday and my kids made friends no problem. Everybody else seemed to be happily married and when you are sat by yourself outside your tent at nine o’clock in the evening it is not really much of a holiday.”

Although single parents tend to be stereotyped, they are as diverse as any other family group, she points out, so her company runs holidays catering for all different kinds of people and varying budgets, from camping weekends in Britain to holidays abroad.

“Quite often the one thing they have in common is they want to holiday with other people just to escape the isolation.” But, having experienced that herself with her two daughters, now aged seven and nine, she admits there can be paranoia involved.

“If you’re a single parent and sitting by yourself you feel like you’re left out and you feel people are looking at you. Half the time they are not, you just feel totally uncomfortable. You think everybody else is happily married and you are the only one.”

The focus of Single With Kids holidays is on fun and friendship. They usually have one group event organised each day, but families are free to do their own thing.

“We get people who just want to dip in and dip out. But quite a lot of people want to do what we organise.”

In families where one parent has died, or is not involved, all the pressure is on the remaining parent. “I think when they come on holiday they are quite happy to give the reins to somebody else,” says Lewandowski.

“It’s a case of ‘just don’t make me think, do it all for me’. Very high-powered professional people do that, which surprised me, but I do understand the reasoning.”

Although it is a business, Lewandowski says it is a passion for her too. “It helps people realise they are part of a growing community of functional families. The media stereotype tells you you are a dysfunctional family and your children are going to grow up damaged.

“I think when you come in contact with lots of other single parents and very happy children, you realise the media image isn’t always that true.”

Set up just last year, Single With Kids is already catering for about 2,000 families a year. Women predominate but its next trip to Pembroke in south Wales has 35 per cent fathers in a group of 78.

It has joined the ranks of other specialist companies, such as Mango Holidays and Single Parents on Holidays (see panel), which recognised the need, and business opportunity, of tailoring holidays for one-adult family groups. Other tour operators in the UK, such as the adventure holiday company Explore, are starting to reserve some of their trips for such clients.

Ann Maxwell of Maxwell’s Travel in Dublin has been the general sales agent in Ireland for Explore for more than 20 years. “Single parents often went on Explore’s family adventure holidays but some of them reported feeling a bit left out if the rest of the group were couples with children, so that is why the company started reserving departure dates for one-parent family groups,” she explains.

Her latest client for one of these trips was a father who has just headed off with his five-year-old daughter to Greece. Many of these single parents are independent-minded travellers, “not sheep”, she stresses, but it means they do have the opportunity to get out, knowing that there are qualified people on site to look after their children in their absence.

In Ireland, where one in six families is now a one-parent family, it seems to be an untapped market. Lone parents often get a raw deal from hotels and tour operators, says a spokeswoman for Sticky Fingers Travel, an Irish family travel website.

She suggests there is plenty of scope for hotels and operators here, who want to distinguish themselves as family friendly, to promote deals which suit a lone adult holidaying with one or more children.

In the absence of such up-front promotions, lone parents should try refusing to pay a single supplement and shop around if necessary for a better price, she adds.

The recession has helped in this regard, says Kiernan of One Family. “We would really encourage people to challenge their package tour operator or hotel to give them a better rate and not insist on a single supplement or try to charge them as a two-adult family. We are seeing that begin to change.”

One group of Irish lone parents who last year organised a very successful new year ski trip are planning to do the same again this year, to Val Cenis in France. They got together through the single parenting discussion board on the Rollercoaster website.

Skiing can be problematic for lone parents, due to the risk of injury – there would be nobody to care for the children if a parent is out of action or hospitalised.

About 25 people, parents and children, from an infant to age 15, went last year and they are expecting a few more this time. By co-operating in supervision of the children, they make sure that all parents can have some time to themselves, as well as the chance to enjoy themselves socially in the evenings.

As Chrissie Lewandowski says: “It is not that lone parents don’t want to spend time with their children on holiday but they do want a rest as well.

“They want their children to be happy but they want to be happy too.”