Mary's Question: How Many Play Dates Do I Have to Do to Be a Good Mother, and is "None" an Acceptable Answer?

 
Play dates. When the hell did this start? Did you ever have "play dates" as a child? I don't think my mother would even know the meaning of the term. When I was a kid, I played with my siblings, or the kid up the street, or occasionally with the weird kid with the runny nose that I was forced to hang out with at my dad's work parties because she was the boss's granddaughter or something. But I never remember my mother ever saying to me, "Okay, so remember Cynthia? You met her at the Mommy and Me class? She's going to come over for an hour and play with you while her mom and I make awkward conversation in the kitchen. Sound nice, honey?"

My mother doesn't swear as a rule, but I think even she would regard this system as "the fuck??"

Yet play dates are talked about EVERYWHERE. Mommy blogs (which I generally avoid because, let's face it, I only get so much time on the computer in a day and I want to find out which celebrities are drunk or pregnant!) talk endlessly about play dates. Facebook friends fret over making healthy snacks that the other moms will approve of. Hell, even books devoted to crappy parenting, like Laurie Kilmartin's Sh*tty Mom, talk about surviving the play date phenomenon.

Which leads me to my next question.

WHY DO I NEED TO BE WORRYING ABOUT PLAY DATES?!?

I know there seems to be a nationwide panic over making sure our children are getting enough "socialization" but have you ever seen children under four socializing with kids they don't know? Most of the time they're either ignoring each other or stealing each other's stuff. Occasionally they bite. I was a daycare teacher for nearly ten years and I can say with confidence that "your toddler needs socialization" is just something we say to make parents feel better about dropping them off every day. Daycare is fine, but I think the "need" it fulfills is the "need for parents to be able to go to work so they can pay the damn mortgage without worrying that their child is in the hands of a maniac" more than the "need for a three-year-old to be forced into making friends."

Sure, some kids make friends at daycare and that's awesome. But does that mean my stay-at-home kid needs me to pick out a group of children for her to be forced to spend time with on a semi-regular basis while I grit my teeth and pretend that I like other parents (or even other kids, for that matter)?

I love taking Magda to play with her cousins because they're family and I want them to know each other. And they do play together. They love each other! And I take her to things that involve groups of other kids, like library programs and playgrounds. I mean, she knows what other children look like. But am I suppose to be trolling the other moms for potential friends for my kid? It just seems weird to me. I'm not even that great at making new friends on my own, so going up to someone and saying, "Hi, you look like you gave birth around the same year I did. You should come over to my house for healthy snacks and awkwardness. Oh, bring your kid."

See what I mean? It would be weird. I would find a way to make it weird.


KiddieTown in Dartmouth. The worst goddamned place on earth.