We encourage parents to bring their children when the kids are both interested and old enough to handle a week-long class. Many parents use the classes as an opportunity to become closer with their children since both the parent and child at learning new and fun skills together.
Teenagers typically do quite well with this, but I the youngest we’ve had in a regular class was 10, and that’s probably about as young as could reasonably fit without unduly distracting the parents and/or other students. Also children under 10 may noth have the arm strength for the carving of the traps we will be doing. Although we do teach certain special classes for young school children and scouts, including some overnight and multiday classes, they are structured and paced quite differently.
It’s often a really good thing when couples can attend together because it seems like they either help push/encourage each other (and a bit of healthy competition doesn’t hurt, either), or they divide and conquer (one concentrates on, say, fire making while the other focuses on shelter, etc.). However, when children are too young to attend, if something like having grandparents take the kids for the week isn’t possible, we’ve had a number of families take the classes in a “tag team” fashion. We usually run the first week class at least a couple of times each year, so one parent came to an earlier session while the other took care of the children, and then they switched for the class offered later that year or the next year.
BEWARE, in many cases when a husband and wife/boyfriend and girlfriend take a class together the female picks up the skills faster than the male. This is typiclly due to the fact that the women tend to listen better and follw direction rather than trying to “muscle” through a skill.