You only have to walk through York city centre to see how common family holidays in term time have become.

It’s easy to blame travel company greed for parents taking children out of school and call for lower prices.

Holidays are among a family’s biggest expenses and everyone would like to see lower prices for peak time holidays.

But not every family taking a holiday in term time does so in the cheapest period. Some do so in June, early July and September.

The true picture is a lot more complicated.

When I was at school, it was practically unheard of for a child to take holiday in term time. But then I was a child in the days when one parent generally either didn’t work or their work time was fitted round school time.

Nowadays most two-parent families have two full time or near full time working adults if they can manage it.

Any working parent has to co-ordinate their holidays with those of their work colleagues who may also wish to be off during the summer months.

Two working parents have to co-ordinate their holidays with two sets of work colleagues, increasing the difficulty of finding a date when both parents can be off together when the children are off.

Should the parents have broken up, as so many have, and found new partners, each would naturally want to take their children on holiday with their new partner and not their old.

So you have two couples looking for times when their work colleagues are not off and when the children are not on holiday with the other couple. That can mean the parents having to co-ordinate their holidays with four sets of work colleagues.

The likelihood of finding a suitable date in the school holidays rapidly diminishes.

My childhood was also a time of less austerity when companies were more willing to provide holiday cover and more willing to accept a reduced level of production during the summer.

Both made it easier to have large numbers of staff off during the school holidays.

But holiday cover disappeared long ago except in those industries and businesses where minimum staffing levels are enforced by law.

And the accountants long since persuaded company directors that if you are maintaining buildings and equipment 12 months a year, it makes financial sense for them to be used fully for 12 months a year instead of for 10 and a bit months a year.

With increased computerisation, austerity and the great financial crisis of 2008, most companies now run on the absolute minimum staffing level they can get away with.

That again reduces the number of staff they are prepared to tolerate being off at the same time in the school holidays.

Finally, add in the baby boom of the last several years, thus increasing the number of parents in work looking for time off in the school holidays, and you may wonder how any family manages to find a week when they can all be off together.

It becomes much easier if you don’t restrict yourself to the six weeks of the school summer holidays for your big family holiday.

But you can only do that if you are prepared to break the law and get fined or a criminal record or both.

Most families and education experts agree that children should be in school throughout the school year if they are not to be disadvantaged in later life.

Children skipping school lose part of their education and their classmates lose part of theirs while the teacher spends time and energy helping the holidaying children catch up with the work they missed on their return to school.

But children unable to spend quality time with their parents suffer emotionally, which can also affect their later life.

In their constant search for profits and greater efficiency, employers are putting their employees with families in a cleft stick.

In the end that affects the whole of society. Family holidays in school time are not just the fault of parents and the travel companies.