Angelina Whang, 3, got some good air at the Sky High Trampolining Junior Jumpers event as part of Kidsfest but most parents have to jump through hoops themselves to cope with the school holidays.

OPINION: I've never had a child. Well, not that I know of. While I've held off having children, a bunch of my friends and family have spent the past few years breeding like mad.

Although parents tell me raising offspring is a rewarding experience – a few have even condescendingly explained how life without children is shallow and meaningless – I'm happy to remain childless at present.

Being an uncle allows me to do all the fun stuff (rollercoasters, zoos, building forts from sheets and chairs) without having to do all the horrible bits (absolute lack of sleep, fishing through stool for foreign bodies).

When I was a child in the 1980s, the first wave of feminism had come and gone, that great Girls Can Do Anything ad was on telly and women were making their way into the workforce to spend the next few decades doing the same jobs as men for less money.

Attending a low decile school meant a bunch of my mates were kids with ratbag dads who were entirely absent and single mothers who were desperately trying to raise a bunch of brats on the allowance the state paid them.

But those I knew whose parents were still together generally had one stay-at-home parent.

Now I look at my friends who have become parents and wonder when the stay-at-home-parent model eroded? Whether desperate to pay mortgages on overpriced houses or the fact that one working-class person can't support a family on the crappy wages workers gets these days, people increasingly head back to work at the earliest available opportunity.

Then I find myself wondering how these families manage to hold it together with the constant holidays. It seems like term time has just started again and – presto – it's holiday time.

My sister's lucky enough to be self-employed. She brings her kids to work where they spend the day trashing the place and complaining of boredom until she's finished her work and they can all head home to trash a more familiar environment.

The courier who dropped off my wine deliveries this week has the same approach. His kid came running in with him, both wearing shorts in the cold and clearly enjoying the time they were spending together.

Or the kid at the local dairy who was learning the intricacies of commerce while his dad stocked the shelves and kept half an eye out to ensure the kid was charging full price.

Taking your kid to work is a great solution for middle-class business owners. You get to teach kids the value of work, train up an unpaid labourer and hopefully spend a bit of quality time with your offspring.

On the flip-side, those with a good chunk of money coming in each week can afford the luxury of a full time parent. If both parents want to work they have the advantage of being able to outsource their parenting.

But what about the poor who work like slaves for bugger-all money? I'm talking about the working poor. Those who slog their guts out week on week, trying to make enough money to feed and house their kids without even thinking about getting ahead.

Once you're doing work at the bottom of the pay scale, there's not a lot of chance your boss is going to be stoked if you bring your snotty-nosed brats along with you to work to trash the place and turn health and safety on its head.

What do these people do? I don't know. But it seems to me like the school system was designed at a time when we were living that dream the baby boomers got to live before they sold the family silver and told us all it was time we all paid our way.

Do we really believe that a family can live a happy and prosperous life with one working class parent doing one of those jobs that are important to our economy, while actually being able to attain the dream of home ownership. I don't think so. And that's with Christchurch house prices. Auckland houses – you're dreaming.

I'll enjoy watching all the mini-me children doing their parents' jobs over the next few weeks, but I do wonder if the school term system is based on a 1950s idealised lifestyle that doesn't exist anymore in the fast-moving modern world.

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