You are a couple with young children looking to claw back some quality us-time on holiday and enjoy the company of other, like-minded and same-situation adults.
So what could be better than the joint holiday, an arrangement where the responsibility of child care is spread between families, where there is on-tap companionship for your children and babysitting duties can be shared with other parents?
A word of caution, many a heavenly plan has turned into the holiday from hell. Let’s look at the pros and cons of shared holidays.
Pros
Pooling your financial resources with another family or families provides you with a holiday home or destination that otherwise would not have been in your price range. Pooling the kids also has the added bonus of you hardly seeing them. You get on like a house on fire with all your fellow adults and a good time is had by all.
Cons
What sounded like a great idea over a boozy lunch last winter has now become reality and, boy, are things tense. The people you liked so much at your regular social braais are turning into real penny-pinchers and control freaks.
Add to this differing approaches to parenting and the hitherto unknown bad behaviour of their children who keep slapping your little cherubs round the head.
Add to this out-of-sync views on bathroom usage and lastly, throw in slapdash domestic routines and the final nail is hammered home. Living in such close proximity, you now realise that the friends you once liked are, in fact, ill-educated peasants and their children Antichrists. The idea that you ever had anything in common now seems absurd. But do you show it? No you do not.
Everyday relations are conducted in an atmosphere of chilling politeness, while the real bitching starts after lights-out, when the couples filter off to their respective rooms and frantic, increasingly hostile whispering ensues well into the night.
Verdict
Some friendships have been ruined because people were foolish enough to think that getting on for two hours at a dinner party once would make you compatible vacation buddies.
Make sure you know who you’re going on holiday with, and what’s more, make sure they know you. — Â