Two holidays doesn't always mean twice the fun

This suffering varies from individual child to individual child, but it’s also clear that boys seem to experience a deeper sense of loss when Dad leaves (and it is usually Dad who leaves).

The emotional pain children experience is made infinitely worse if parents are at loggerheads and denigrate the other parent as if engaged in a cross between the debaters of the Oxford Union and the fighters of MMA. What that does is ask a child to take sides when they do not want to and cannot. This is not their fight, after all.

Additionally, a spotlight is shone on the absence of a parent at particular times. Christmas, obviously, but also the summer holiday. Grim-faced single parents, struggling with suitcases and perhaps a pushchair and already exhausted, take their offspring to a place where different dangers – sunburn, different food, dodgy water, etc – loom. All while convincing themselves and their children that it is going to be spectacular fun.

I have nothing but admiration for them. The one time I took my children on holiday alone, they returned sunburnt and with ear infections. And no, my former partner did not take the news with equanimity. Perhaps understandably so…

Holidays can therefore exacerbate the child's sense of loss. Where once mum and dad managed the child seat, car hire, and muddled through, the other parent isn’t there to help now.

As many children observe, the holiday period can feel like a time of loss, not a time of fun. School holidays are when families create memories. They provide opportunities for deeper bonding and shared experiences. The development of traditions, sightseeing and quality time spent together.

Yet for many separated fathers, holidays bring anxiety rather than excitement. Contact arrangements that function during term time can suddenly become contested. Planned trips are cancelled, handovers fail, communication breaks down. Missing a fortnight of contact time in the summer could mean losing a significant proportion of annual parenting time.

Some point out that children whose parents can both afford to take them away gain a double dividend – two holidays each summer. Yet this too can be fraught. Children like a holiday, but also like home. Moving from a week away with one parent to the other parent and another week away can lead to holiday fatigue.

What helps ease the summer holiday challenge is having greater support for co-parenting after separation, so that new rhythms and accord can replace the pain and discord of breaking up. This also means earlier access to mediation and dispute resolution; better public understanding of the importance of both parents; family justice processes that focus on sustaining healthy parent-child relationships; greater recognition of the mental health challenges faced by separated parents, and a far stronger emphasis on children's right to maintain meaningful relationships with both parents where it is safe to do so.

So, as we approach this summer’s big getaway, take time to notice the struggling single parent; offer a helping hand if appropriate and know there is often a parent left behind remembering when things at this time of year were so different.

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Nick Isles is the Director of the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys (CPRMB).

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