The half-term office exodus is far worse for parents – trust me

Please spare a thought for parents like me who are off work over half-term, says Charlotte Cripps. I’d far rather be eating a Pret A Manger sandwich at my desk than spending all my cash at a soft play

Like millions of other parents up and down the UK this week, I’m battling my way through half-term having taken the week off work. I’m frazzled: I have not stopped cleaning, clearing up, having playdates, cooking pasta, finding more snacks, dealing with meltdowns, and ferrying my children Lola, 8, and Liberty, 6, around the place in the rain.

Yet, when some non-parent employees clock it’s half-term because they are faced with a mass of empty desks and tons of out-of-office auto-replies, they take the view that us parents are kicking back on holiday without a care in the world while they have to pick up the slack at work. They look around the office in total disbelief and complain about productivity slumps during the school holidays. It’s almost a running joke – and the underlying assumption is that we (mainly women of course) are somehow to blame for it.

The half-term office exodus, however, is far worse for parents – trust me. Yes, it’s frustrating to wait for sign-offs and put projects on hold, but parents don’t necessarily want to take time off to spend with their little ones. I’m one of them. I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy spending quality time with my children – and many parents take annual leave to do just that – but more often than not, as is the case for me this half-term, we are forced to take time off because we have no childcare options, or we can’t afford childcare.

I have a few friends with full-time nannies costing £45,000 a year, but that is not a reality for most of us – especially single parents like me. I have no family to fall back on. A childminder is about £15 to £18 per hour. We don’t have the luxury of choosing when we take our holidays, either: that’s dictated to us by school term dates. We face higher costs if we travel, because of intense demand, which prices out many British families. I haven’t left the UK this week because half-term flights soared to nine times the normal price, and cheaper airfares to locations in eastern Europe, such as Poland, just didn’t seem so appealing.

It’s no wonder, really, that almost half a million fines were issued to parents in England during the last academic year for taking their children out of school without permission – up 22 per cent on the previous year. But even if parents like me take the £80 fines for holidaying in termtime, it doesn’t solve the childcare issue at half-term anyway.

I can’t get any government-funded help as a single working parent; once children start school, there are no free childcare hours of the sort that many working parents get for their children aged nine months to four years old. The only other option is to find an au pair – but how many of us have a spare room? I have mum friends who take unpaid parental leave for four weeks over the summer holidays to avoid childcare costs. It’s sensible, but they are two-parent-income families.

It’s no wonder the birth rate is plummeting: for Millennials and Gen Z, having a child is unaffordable – and it rules out sunny holidays (Getty)

There are holiday clubs; near me, in west London’s Ladbroke Grove, a three-hour art class costs £70 per child. I liked the idea of a mindfulness drama camp – but that would have set me back £720 for the week for two children, at £72 each a day. At a local Spanish school, I could have dropped my kids off at 8.30am and picked them up at 5.30pm for £230 for a full week per child – that included activities such as a trip to a trampoline park and having an Oreo milkshake.

There are shared playdates, where you rotate the kids to each other’s houses maybe for half a day, but it only takes one parent to have an explosive work crisis and the whole plan falls apart.

As a result, I’ve been forced to spend a fortune this week trying to entertain my kids in miserable grey weather by seeking out indoor activities, such as ice skating and laser tag. I also booked the Harry Potter studio tour at £45 per person, well in advance, as a treat. It was worth it. The rest of half-term is spent putting the children in front of intelligent TV shows like Bluey – or their iPads for a few hours – merely to keep costs down and avoid the flat turning into a pigsty.

I live in fear of losing the plot and shouting inappropriate things like “Make your own food!” to a six-year-old because I just can’t go on with the conveyor belt of meals. It’s no wonder the birth rate is plummeting: for Millennials and Gen Z, having a child is unaffordable – and it rules out sunny holidays.

And as the work-from-home debate rages on, with companies like Amazon and JPMorgan forcing workers back to the office in the quest for higher productivity, having children could become even more out of reach. If they’re really keen on getting people back into the office, and are concerned about getting work done, there needs to be more support offered to parents to allow them to comply.

Just over a quarter of people (26 per cent) in the UK are thought to be hybrid-working, with 13 per cent fully remote, and 41 per cent fully office-based. Believe me, the 41 per cent are not single parents. The office may resemble a ghost town over half-term – but it’s not our fault. And while “Have a lovely week off” is a normal comment to make when a colleague is off for the week, it’s also tone-deaf. I don’t think non-parent employees really understand what is in store for us over these enforced breaks.

I’d far prefer to have a Pret A Manger sandwich at my desk than be hanging out in a soft play.