Congratulations. Now go away...
My husband and I have now reached an age where many of our friends have started families, seemingly all at once. This past spring we were invited to a boatload of baby showers, approximately 2 years after the weddings. This seems to be the thing: get married, spend a year doing whatever, then procreate. I fully support people having children – from a distance, they all look adorable, and you don’t notice the smell. What I do not support, however, is the child-centric culture that has developed around parenthood these days.
People bring their children everywhere. Gone are the days where people hire a sitter for an adults-only night out. It is not unusual to see children at dinner late at night in fancy restaurants, at late night showings of movies, or in the grocery store at a point in the evening nearly past my bedtime, never mind theirs. And more often than not, the children are whining and fussing because they are (understandably) tired or bored. The parents are cranky and short-tempered with the children, and the first ones to complain how they never get to go out and do anything any more because they have kids. Yet the obvious solution – hire a sitter – seems to escape them. I’ve tried to investigate why this is with some of my childed friends. Gentle probing seems to have uncovered two main reasons: 1) I don’t trust anyone else with my child and 2) sitters are expensive! Yet the parents complain that they never get to do anything fun or get invited anywhere special anymore. There’s a reason for that, folks.
Once our friends have children, it seems like we never see just the two of them again. It has led my husband and I to develop a policy of slowly disengaging from couples as soon as they announce the pregnancy. By the time the baby arrives, we’ve cut back on socializing with them to the extent that we can swoop in, meet the baby, and get out in just about an hour. We did this recently for a college buddy and his wife. We brought a present, each held the baby, made some small talk and pretended to be fascinated by the ins-and-outs of the hospital stay and all the new things they’ve learned, then fled for a matinee movie showing. They were so busy with their precious new arrival they didn’t notice that I got us out of there in sixty-five minutes, a new record even for me.
That’s not to say that I totally avoid children. I am the “charming aunt” to my cousins’ children, bringing back gifts for the kids when we travel to various exotic locations, providing age-appropriate fun birthday and holiday gifts, and playing with them when we visit. I visit new babies and bring a gift, complimenting the new parents on the baby. I can work it with the best of them, even as I offer to hold the baby and think, “Thank God you’re not mine.” Under the right circumstances, spending time with friends and their children works well. But the careful negotiation of nap times, appropriate venues for socializing, and the need to keep plans fluid and short in case of a small-person meltdown removes the element of spontaneity for my husband and I and can exhaust us before we even manage to meet up with our friends.
What fascinates me is the way people don’t seem to understand that our reluctance to make plans has everything to do with the lack of getting a sitter. Outright suggesting that a sitter be hired is often dismissed with a comment that they take their child or children everywhere. Every time my phone rings with a “long-time-no-see” friend who is sitter-phobic, yet clamoring to get together with us for an evening, I proceed cautiously, hoping that they’ve changed their tune and have a sitter in the wings. When I suggest going out and they say, “Well, we’ll have to make it early because of Junior’s schedule,” I know to hem and haw on the date and promise to get back to them when the schedule “…frees up a bit….” Invitations to go to their house for dinner are an automatic “no” because, of course, a small noisy child (or perhaps more) will be there, and the expectation is that you will entertain their kids, no matter how marginally, for at least some length of time. Catching up is a near-impossibility because nothing is so captivating to a child as a parent who is trying to talk to another adult, and bedtime is so late that you find yourself leaving just as the children are starting their evening sleep rituals, which can often take hours.
Fortunately, my husband and I enjoy each other’s company and still have a reasonably large group of friends who don’t have children. And if the day comes that we’re suddenly out of friends, we’ll use some of that spare disposable income not going toward daycare, diapers, or savings for college for another great trip or upgraded electronics to enjoy our time in our quiet, uncluttered home.
Bottom line: don’t call us, we’ll call you — unless you’ve got a sitter. We’d be happy to see just the two of you.
Copyright Kathleen O'Connor. Published 1 February 2009 in Editorials.
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