No kids zones: discrimination that undermines community cohesion?
Since the 2000s, there has been a rise in the number of "no kids" vacation rentals, tourist attractions, and restaurants, which has raised concerns among public authorities. What does this phenomenon of generational segregation say about our ability to function as a society? How is the place of children in public spaces changing?
Sylvain Wagnon, University of Montpellier
Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of "no kids" initiatives: restaurants, hotels, airlines, and festive events discourage or even prohibit the presence of children. Although still marginal in France, the phenomenon is growing rapidly.
On May 27, 2025, Sarah El Haïry, High Commissioner for Children, met with tourism federations to express her disapproval of this trend toward exclusion. She announced the possibility of a child-friendly charter that would make such segregation illegal. This political awareness is not new. In April 2024, Socialist Senator Laurence Rossignol introduced a bill aimed at "recognizing minority status as a factor in discrimination in order to promote a society that is open to children."
How can we define this phenomenon of generational segregation? How does the question of the place given to children in public spaces reveal our collective ability to function as a society?
An "adults only" commercial
The "adult only" trend originated in the international seaside tourism sector and developed in the 2000s in Mediterranean Europe. By 2023, nearly 1,600 hotels worldwide are expected to be classified as "adult only," twice as many as in 2016. These establishments aim to exclude children from certain areas, or even from the entire offering, as part of marketing strategies targeting adults without children or whose children have grown up.
The concept now extends beyond the hotel sector: it also affects restaurants, cruises, vacation homes, and even some amusement parks. The argument is always the same: growing demand from adults seeking peace and quiet, who resent the crying, noise, or behavior of children that they find disruptive.
This raises the question of children's fundamental rights in society. As early as 1959, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the United Nations General Assembly affirmed the need to protect the youngest members of society. This principle was reinforced by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, which specifies, in particular in Article 2, the right of every child to non-discrimination and, in Article 31, the right to participate fully in cultural, artistic, recreational, and leisure activities.
In this view, any systematic exclusion of children from certain public places runs counter to these international commitments and undermines their full integration into society. In this regard, researcher Zoe Moody emphasizes the importance of viewing children not only as beings to be protected, but also as full-fledged social actors with rights, capable of participating in social life and being heard in the public sphere.
The work of child psychiatrist Laelia Benoit introduces the concept of "infantism," discrimination against children, which leads to their exclusion from certain spaces or refusal to consider them as full subjects of law.
"Spoiled brat and nuisance": toward everyday discrimination
The status of children in our society remains marked by a form of everyday discrimination that is often trivialized and rarely questioned.
This discrimination is reflected in particular in the persistence and legitimization of certain forms of so-called "ordinary" educational violence, despite the entry into force of the law of July 10, 2019, which explicitly prohibits all forms of educational violence. These practices, sometimes tolerated in the name of tradition or parental authority, contribute to perpetuating the idea that children should be controlled and corrected rather than listened to and respected.
Furthermore, positive education is regularly criticized, often in media discourse rather than scientific discourse, which presents it as lax or ineffective. This mistrust of educational methods that respect children's rights reveals a persistent difficulty in recognizing children as full subjects of law.
Children are only fully accepted if they remain discreet, docile, and almost invisible, which severely limits their freedom of expression and existence in public spaces, "a territory of freedom that is becoming increasingly restricted for children." On February 19, 2024, the daily newspaper Libération ran the headline "Me, a kid and a nuisance," analyzing the increasingly accepted exclusion of children since the 1990s. Public spaces have gradually adapted to the needs of cars, relegating children to secure, marked-out areas such as playgrounds and schoolyards, and limiting their freedom of movement in a fragmented city.
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The evidence is clear: for several decades, there has been a decline in the presence of children in public spaces. Clément Rivière's research has highlighted this retreat of children into the home. This retreat also perpetuates gender inequality in the face of an outside world that is perceived as dangerous.
In October 2024, the High Council for Family, Children, and Ageing (HCFEA) asked the question: what place do children have in public spaces and nature? Alarmingly, more than 37% of 11-17 year olds have a very sedentary lifestyle. Focusing on the place of children in the city therefore means addressing a real public health issue, but also one of citizenship and autonomy.
At child height
Another movement, that of "child-friendly cities," is gaining ground in many local communities. This approach aims to rethink the city by taking into account the needs, rights, and participation of children, in order to enable them to reclaim urban space and fully exercise their citizenship.
The concept developed in France and Europe starting in the 2010s, inspired by pioneering initiatives carried out in particular in Italy in Fano, on the Adriatic coast, in the 1990s by sociologist Francesco Tonucci. This trend is not a direct reaction to the "no kids" phenomenon, but rather a broader response to an awareness of the negative effects of urbanization, the dominance of cars, and the decline in children's autonomy in cities.
In France, the first "child-friendly" charters in the Lille and Montpellier metropolitan areas are based on the idea that children, like all other members of a community, have the right to reclaim public spaces, and that their participation should contribute to rethinking the city.
The subject is attracting growing interest in local public policy. The movement is spreading: many local authorities, such as Tours, Nantes, Rennes, Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseille, and Paris, are engaging in participatory initiatives that involve children in discussions about urban planning.
Recognizing the importance of children in cities has led to a variety of developments, such as the creation of pedestrianized or traffic-calmed school streets around schools to make daily journeys safer, and the development of play areas, accessible green spaces, and adventure playgrounds. It also involves adapting street furniture (child-height benches, fountains, appropriate signage) and redesigning public spaces to encourage intergenerational encounters and free play.
Between the rise of "no kids" spaces and the development of inclusive urban policies for children, our society is oscillating between two visions of living together. The first, focused on exclusion and individualized comfort, reveals a discomfort with the diversity of uses of public space. The second, inclusive and participatory, suggests that thinking for and with children allows us to live better together.
The challenge is therefore twofold: recognizing children as social and political subjects, and questioning the logic of exclusion that weakens intergenerational ties. Because a society that does not tolerate its children may be a society that struggles to project itself into the future.
Sylvain Wagnon, Professor of Education Sciences, Faculty of Education, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.