Give Britain A Break

Families that holiday together are happier and healthier

This is according to a new All Party Parliamentary Group report - Giving Britain a Break - launched today and supported by the Family Holiday Association and Thomson. 

What do you think? Is this a new realisation? It does make sense I agree!


As a family we are currently getting pretty excited about our first mini break at Christmas.  We have not had a family holiday since our youngest Rosie was born 15 months ago. There are a million reasons why not including financial reasons, husbands time off, worrying about how to manage a toddler and a baby on holiday etc..


Therefore I was really interested when I heard about this report.


New research by Thomson Holidays has shown that:

• 42% of parents would like to spend more quality time with their children
• 49% of working parents don’t use all of their holiday allowance
• Half of 8-12 year old's say they would like to spend more time with Dad
• 1 in 5 parents can’t take enough time off work to have a holiday
• and a staggering 49% of workers don’t use all their holiday allowance

Pretty shocking really or is it? We all know that in this financial climate, parents are working longer and harder than ever before but apparently true quality time together is becoming alarmingly rare. This research showed that over a quarter (27%) of parents stated that in an average week they spend less than an hour a day together with  their children - despite almost half saying they wanted to spend more time. 


I am fortunate enough to be able to be a stay at home mum to my girls but during the week Husband only gets to see them for about an hour maybe two if they are lucky. We do however, make sure that weekends when he is not working, we do fun family things and have what we call family days.


Interestingly though:

"its not just the adults who struggle to find enough hours in the day. 2 in 5 reported that often they have set aside time, their children can be unwilling to reciprocate due to clubs, activities and playing with their friends".  

In support of this report, Thomson is creating a Family Charter to put quality time back at the heart of the family, both at home and on holiday. The charter will be developed with leading children’s champion Nicky Cox MBE and editor of award winning children’s newspaper First News, which is read by more than a million UK children every week and their families.

Nicky Cox says “Forget ’me time’ and ‘you time’, what we need now is ‘our time’, together as a family. We are inviting every reader of First News – children, teenagers and parents alike – to indentify the top promises they should make to create quality time together. The Thomson Family Charter will help us all ditch the distractions and dedicate more time to our families. We know it’s tough but let’s find a way of working together as families. It’s not just about parents offering more time, but kids making time too.”

Growing up we always had family holidays and as a young adult with no children or responsibilities, Husband and I gallivanted all over the place. Even with our first baby we managed to go on road trips and exciting holidays. However, since our second has come along we haven't been anywhere except to visit family around the country.

I think that time away from work and home is the perfect way to relax and enjoy each others company. Getting away from it all, spending quality time together and forgetting about your usual worries has got to be good for the family.  I know after reading this it has reminded me why I always used to think holidays were so important and made them a priority.  I am going to make an effort to make sure we get one from now on and am looking forward to our little break even more now.

You might be interested to know that following this research, The Government has identified tourism as one of the five key areas that are best placed to rebuild and rebalance the UK economy.

Karen x


The Thomson research was undertaken on a randomly selected sample of 471 families in the UK with children aged 8-12 years.  Part of the questionnaire required answers by children of respondents; agreement to child participation was given by all adult respondents.  The research was conducted by Kids Industries in October 2011.