Play Dates

Yesterday it was my son’s 7th birthday party. He had four friends over (and one younger sibling) and they had a blast. They tore through our house and garden like a whirlwind of giggles, shouts and squeals. My boy had looked forward to it for weeks and it was probably the most fun he’d had all summer.

What’s more, it was less work for us. Looking after one hyperactive 7-year-old is harder than looking after 5 of them. At a time when parents are doing more parenting than ever, why aren’t we taking advantage of play dates more?

What they took from us

To hear tell of our parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods, this was the norm. Every night after school. Every day during the holidays. Children everywhere, self-policing and self-entertaining. The data bears that out, and what would once have been classed as “intensive” parenting is the new “neglectful” parenting.

We offered ‘drop-off and pick-up’ and only one of the parents took us up on it - the rest stayed for the duration of the party. It was genuinely nice - a lot of our conversations were on the hardships of raising young kids, especially during the long summer holidays. This new future of child-raising seems objectively worse for parents, and yet there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that it’s better for children. If anything, there’s growing evidence that it’s worse for them.

But people aren’t stupid and generally don’t act in sustained irrational ways…how did we get here? The past is the future that they took from us. Who is ‘they’?

A Diagnosis

In the 1960s and 1970s, as car traffic rose, children died at the hands of motorists. Then, over the subsequent decades, the number of children’s deaths fell. Not mainly because of any safety intervention or campaign, but because parents simply stopped letting their children out. In 1971, 80% of 7-8 year olds travelled to school independently. By 1990, it was 9%.

Children lost their immediately available third place, because as a society we granted it to cars instead.

Now, the roads (and pavements) are much safer than they were back then, and yet the children still don’t have a place to play on their doorstep. Why? Because streets don’t just need to be safe. They need to be bustling. An empty street where nobody plays isn’t an attractive proposition for a child. A street with a bunch of kids playing is. When your child looks out of their window, which do they see? We gave up our neighbourhood for cars, and by the time we made them safe again, nobody was playing outside any more.

Who is they, then? Parents in the 1980s who cared for their kids? Motorists in the 1970s who didn’t drive carefully enough? Governments in the 1960s who didn’t realise what they needed to protect? ‘They’ is always just ‘us’, but without the information that we have now.

A Coordination Problem

So now, what used to be a child’s job (looking out of the window) has become an adult’s job: organising a play date. Adults (especially me) are awkward about things in a way kids aren’t. What if my house isn’t tidy enough? What if I cook the wrong food? What if I allow the wrong type of toy or screen? What if my child behaves badly? Or the other child gets hurt? What if they don’t agree with my parenting approach?

The same logic might explain why those parents stayed at the party. Maybe they don’t trust us, maybe they were desperate for adult conversation and bonding with those sharing their struggles, or maybe leaving felt rude. Parents who wish they could get a free afternoon and parents who want somebody to talk to end up behaving the same way. It’s one big jumble of social awkwardness.

The childcare might be easier, but navigating the social judo a play date set-up requires is real work that takes real effort. And as anybody who spends any time studying large amounts of human data will tell you, if it takes real effort, it’s probably not going to happen much.

This coordination cost is actually multiplied by the fact that it involves multiple decision makers - I can’t unilaterally decide to organise a play date as I’m neither the primary caregiver, nor allowed on the school mums’ WhatsApp group (for people’s phone numbers).

The Solution

I don’t have one, I’m afraid. We’ve taken effortless child-organised play on our doorsteps and replaced it with parentally-negotiated hosting, and as a result, our kids spend less time playing with each other than they ever have. That sucks for kids, and it sucks for parents too. Maybe we need a standing engagement (organise once, benefit forever) or a rota…somebody has to go first, I guess.