School holidays in Uganda represent a critical but neglected period in children's developmental trajectories, during which the institutional structures of schooling give way to home environments characterized by highly variable parental engagement, supervision quality, and learning continuity. This qualitative study explored how parents understand and enact their roles during school holiday periods, and how these understandings and enactments are shaped by socioeconomic context, gender, occupational demands, and cultural norms around parenting. Employing grounded theory methodology, the study conducted in-depth interviews with thirty-six parents across urban, peri- urban, and rural settings in Uganda, supplemented by focus group discussions and observational data from four household case studies. Findings revealed that parents conceptualize the holiday period through multiple, often competing frameworks: as a rest period for both children and parents, as a learning continuation opportunity, as a period of heightened child vulnerability requiring increased supervision, and as a period of productive labour contribution in agricultural households. The study documents substantial disparities in holiday parenting quality along socioeconomic lines, with wealthier urban parents structuring holidays through extracurricular programming while low-income rural parents face competing demands between agricultural productivity and child supervision. Critically, many parents experience what the study terms 'parental term anxiety'-the pressure to compensate academically for perceived school inadequacies during holidays-a dynamic that reflects broader distrust of Uganda's public school system. Recommendations address policy support for parent education, holiday learning programme accessibility, and child protection infrastructure during school breaks.