10 ms·

Here in the states, it starts very young. A parent must schedule a playdate beforehand, update it in the google calendar, drive the child 10-15 blocks to their

by rland 8y ago

Here in the states, it starts very young. A parent must schedule a playdate beforehand, update it in the google calendar, drive the child 10-15 blocks to their friends house. Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. To ensure maximum progress, play date activities must be intellectually stimulating and structured based on how much they contribute to test scores and college admissions down the line—this is known from statistical methods of course. Video streaming smartphone applications enable parents to check in at any time during the activity to ensure maximum growth. As the children grow up, this does not stop of course. In fact, it becomes less playful and more efficient. Time wasted during youth is punished brutally in the holistic college admissions process. By the time we've grown into adults, such impulses—such as spending time at a friends' house for no reason at all—can be completely eliminated. This ensures that more time in adulthood is dedicated to what truly matters, which is.... gosh I'm not sure. I can ponder that after I finish this next 'to do' on my list!

adrianratnapala 8y ago
I enjoy this joke because it tickles my pre-conceptions, that I grew from reading articles on the internet by Americans. But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)?
- bmpafa 8y ago
  Maybe for a _very_ specific subset of people, but I think by & large we can count on Americans' distaste for organizing our schedules to preclude any kind of hyper-optimized child-rearing from becoming too popular. That is: the caricature's funny, but it sounds like _way_ too much damn work.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  > But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)? It's basically accurate in the literal sense. Or at least, I'm a parent and I'm seeing this essentially word-for-word with all nearby parents/children in our area. The venmo part stands out as being a SF thing. In the midwest, even young families are mostly old school and just pay with a credit card or paper check (yes literal paper checks written from a checkbook). But the rest of it...yeah? It's essentially accurate. Playdates are always scheduled beforehand (in Google Calendar, or far more commonly via Facebook invites between the parents). You do have to drive the child 10-15 blocks to every event (children are so expensive and housing is even more expensive, no one can afford to live near each other, so kids of similar age groups are still all spread out across the metro region and not in any one area/neighborhood). You can check on your kids at via smartphone at any daycare, and any other activity requires at least one parent be present anyway. All activities are required to have some attempt at "education", no matter how silly or tenuous that is. And it's kind of tricky because it's a defacto part of society. I hate this hyper-scheduled hyper-data-driven stuff myself. But since the large majority of other parents do this, I can't avoid it -- we must contribute to this with our own kid too, otherwise we'd be depriving the child of social interaction with other children of matching ages.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - bcantrill 8y ago
    It's not accurate -- or at least, not necessarily. I live in "urban California" (East Bay), and at this moment (7:40p on a Sunday evening), my five-year-old daughter is out front on the stoop with one of our five-year-old neighbors, who wandered over to show her a new toy motorcycle he got. My ten-year-old is out to an impromptu dinner with a friend of his and their family. My thirteen-year-old is at a nearby park skateboarding and/or playing pickup ultimate with some friends. The five-year-old will come in shortly; the ten-year-old will be home later; I expect the thirteen-year-old home sometime around sundown. I planned none of this -- none of it was scheduled. Moreover, none of this is an attempt to educate them in any conventional way, and the only data driving is that freedom and unstructured time help build important qualities like independence and resilience. As with so many things, there are many microclimates of parenting and child-rearing; if you value unstructured time for your kids and building their independence, you can likely find a community that shares those values.
    - harlanji 8y ago
      Beautiful, sounds like my life in S. Minneapolis in 1985-2005ish. My friends who still call it home are having kids recently and they’re pretty free-range organic like this too. I’ve been thinking about forgoing a fam because of how things seem in my SF life for the last years (NoPa to Outmost Sunset). I like Oakland when I visit, like First Fridays, vibe is more relaxed. Thanks for sharing.
    - adrianratnapala 8y ago
      > you can likely find a community that shares those values. So did you look for such a community yourself, or did it just happen? Either way, do you have any tips that maxsilver and others can use to find or create a good "microclimate"?
      - bcantrill 8y ago
        Yes, we absolutely sought out a community that shared our values; it didn't just happen. And it wasn't easy or quick; it took us a while to identify a community, and then a while more to find a house here (with our objective to find a house before our oldest entered kindergarten). In terms of tips: spend spare time trying a community on for size; go to its parks, walk its streets, talk to its inhabitants, meet its neighborhood groups. And importantly, figure out where you're willing to compromise. (For example, if walkability is important to you (and it is to us), you will almost certainly be compromising on lot size and house size: walkable neighborhoods usually have high density, which likely means smaller dwellings more tightly packed.) None of this is easy, but finding a community that matches your values (or at least isn't inconsistent with them) is worth the effort: it's one of the most important decisions you'll make in your adult life, and merits special time and attention.
- orbitur 8y ago
  I believe it's accurate for a subset of middle class fams, and more higher class stay-at-home moms and families who can afford nannies. They exist, but most families don't have the time and money.
- avemg 8y ago
  It's not accurate. In a country of 325 million, you'll surely find some examples of it, but it's not been my experience as the father of two young children.
- jawilson2 8y ago
  I live in the suburbs of north chicago. This weekend my 8 year old had a friend ride his bike to our house. They rode bikes up and down our street while our two younger kids tagged along, and they went and played in the creek up the road for an hour. Then they came back and played capture the flag and basketball, then came in and had a popsicle and played Super Smash Bros. At no point did my wife or I talk to his parents, aside from "X would like to come over sometime Saturday, will you be around?" Apart from the Smash Bros., it could have been a scene from Andy Griffith or something. If it matters, this is from a pretty wealthy area (Michael Jordan's mansion is about 10 minutes up the road from us).
nikmobi 8y ago
> Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. Wait, what? Parents are paying other parents for play dates these days?
- StavrosK 8y ago
  Oh wow, that sounds insane to me.
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  I think/hope GP is being sarcastic. I've never seen anyone reimburse anyone for a playdate. I also live in a neighborhood where you see everyone outside regularly so a lot of it is spontaneous. Even with my wife's moms group that has arranged playdates, though, no one pays anyone else.
  - Moru 8y ago
    That's just another way of paying. Next week it's your turn to host the playdate.
    - jimktrains2 8y ago
      That's significantly different than paying someone in cash. (Also, I didn't say they rotate, they do, but it's not among everyone. Some people have larger houses and are happier to host so they do it more often.)
- lgessler 8y ago
  It was satire--the point is that that is a certain style of parenting taken to its conclusion.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
bitwize 8y ago
Again, if this is the norm in America -- it only became so recently. Not early enough for the generation of kids raised under this norm to turn thirty. I just turned forty and for both me and my younger sister, hanging out with kids from the neighborhood spontaneously was routine for us.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  The spring time activity for the kids in the neighborhood here has been hitting snow piles with sticks. Now that the snow is gone one of them switched to hitting pieces of wood with a croquet mallet. The kids are alright.
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    Agreed, all of this is overblown. Kids find fun things to do. That's what kids do; with or without "helicopter parents" and with or without technology. I'd bet most of these replies in this nature are written by child-less people giving their view of how things are so much worse now than when they were kids. They're still doing the same stuff they've always done (wasting time and having fun).
- sykh 8y ago
  It started in the 80s with the Jacob Wetterling [1] kidnapping and things like the McMartin preschool trial [2]. Stranger danger, fear of crime (it was much higher in the 80s than now) and whatnot has lead parents being overly afraid to let their kids roam. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
  - scarface74 8y ago
    In the 80s, the danger was very real in Atlanta.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979%E2%80%9381 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979%E2%80%...
kfrzcode 8y ago
> what truly matters Paying off the debts owed to society of course
atomi 8y ago
> The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. - Kurt Vonnegut
gravity_123 8y ago
Reading this and replies to it saying how this is slowly becoming(or already is) the reality, I now get why stranger things is a highly acclaimed show. Not to take away anything from the storyline, direction, acting but one large appeal of the show was that it brought back memories. Parents of today lived the life portrayed by the kids in the show(cycling, staying overnight at friends house, etc) and yearn for a comeback of those days, long gone by for the most part.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Kuiper 8y ago
  I've seen some online commenters (that I can only assume are younger millennials or Gen-Z'ers) call the show "unrealistic" due to the amount of autonomy the kids have, apparently not realizing that this is how many people grew up in the 1980's. It's hard not to feel wistful when you see that things have changed so much that people growing up today will watch a show where kids bicycle around town in the afternoon before going home for dinner and can't identify with it. I was born in 1990 and I feel like my childhood sort of straddled the line between these two realities. When my family moved to California in the early 90's, I made friends with the neighbor kids simply because they were the neighbor kids, and we many afternoons finding wandering around looking for ways to entertain ourselves. Kids would frequently play in the middle of the street. Nowadays, the streets of that neighborhood are empty. I'll go to the small nearby park, and maybe see kids if there's a youth sports league game or someone having a birthday party there. Having spent some time in Australia recently, one of the things that struck me is how often you see kids (often in their school uniforms) walking around town by themselves, going to get fast food with friends or hang out at the library. In the US, I've also noticed it in several ethnic neighborhoods (Jewish and Chinese neighborhoods, specifically). Part of me wonders how much of this is born out of affluence. On occasion, I'll find myself passing through a lower-income part of town, and the dynamic changes. You see kids walking to the store alone, maybe to buy things, maybe just to hang around and wait for their friends to stop by. Often, groups of kids consist of an older kid (maybe 10 years old) acting as a "caretaker" for a younger group of siblings. You'll be pumping gas, and someone at the opposite pump randomly strike up a conversation with you. If you're not used to it, it actually kind of catches you off guard. I know some people flee to suburbs specifically to avoid these kinds of interactions, but once you get past the initial surprise of, "huh, someone I don't know started talking to me just to talk to me, that doesn't happen every day," I actually find certain parts of it to be quite pleasant. It reminds me of how I used to live, and how I suspect my parents (and their parents) lived.
gumby 8y ago
That’s a pretty funny exaggeration but not an exaggeration by much. That is, I’ve seen examples of it all. But I brought up a (now) 20 year old in Palo Alto without the scheduling, tutoring, driving around and other nonsense, and he did get into a “top” school (whatever “top” really means). But it did show a clear partition in which kids he could in practice be friends with. OTOH he was able to pocket quite a bit of cash tutoring some pampered kids!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
andrepd 8y ago
>Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. Wow. Surely this is hyperbole?
- EADGBE 8y ago
  None of that isn't.
jazzyk 8y ago
>This ensures that more time in adulthood is dedicated to what truly matters, which is.... ...mindless consumption

by rland 8y ago

adrianratnapala 8y ago

I enjoy this joke because it tickles my pre-conceptions, that I grew from reading articles on the internet by Americans. But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)?

bmpafa 8y ago
Maybe for a _very_ specific subset of people, but I think by & large we can count on Americans' distaste for organizing our schedules to preclude any kind of hyper-optimized child-rearing from becoming too popular. That is: the caricature's funny, but it sounds like _way_ too much damn work.
maxsilver 8y ago
> But is it really accurate (not in the literal sense obviously)? It's basically accurate in the literal sense. Or at least, I'm a parent and I'm seeing this essentially word-for-word with all nearby parents/children in our area. The venmo part stands out as being a SF thing. In the midwest, even young families are mostly old school and just pay with a credit card or paper check (yes literal paper checks written from a checkbook). But the rest of it...yeah? It's essentially accurate. Playdates are always scheduled beforehand (in Google Calendar, or far more commonly via Facebook invites between the parents). You do have to drive the child 10-15 blocks to every event (children are so expensive and housing is even more expensive, no one can afford to live near each other, so kids of similar age groups are still all spread out across the metro region and not in any one area/neighborhood). You can check on your kids at via smartphone at any daycare, and any other activity requires at least one parent be present anyway. All activities are required to have some attempt at "education", no matter how silly or tenuous that is. And it's kind of tricky because it's a defacto part of society. I hate this hyper-scheduled hyper-data-driven stuff myself. But since the large majority of other parents do this, I can't avoid it -- we must contribute to this with our own kid too, otherwise we'd be depriving the child of social interaction with other children of matching ages.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bcantrill 8y ago
  It's not accurate -- or at least, not necessarily. I live in "urban California" (East Bay), and at this moment (7:40p on a Sunday evening), my five-year-old daughter is out front on the stoop with one of our five-year-old neighbors, who wandered over to show her a new toy motorcycle he got. My ten-year-old is out to an impromptu dinner with a friend of his and their family. My thirteen-year-old is at a nearby park skateboarding and/or playing pickup ultimate with some friends. The five-year-old will come in shortly; the ten-year-old will be home later; I expect the thirteen-year-old home sometime around sundown. I planned none of this -- none of it was scheduled. Moreover, none of this is an attempt to educate them in any conventional way, and the only data driving is that freedom and unstructured time help build important qualities like independence and resilience. As with so many things, there are many microclimates of parenting and child-rearing; if you value unstructured time for your kids and building their independence, you can likely find a community that shares those values.
  - harlanji 8y ago
    Beautiful, sounds like my life in S. Minneapolis in 1985-2005ish. My friends who still call it home are having kids recently and they’re pretty free-range organic like this too. I’ve been thinking about forgoing a fam because of how things seem in my SF life for the last years (NoPa to Outmost Sunset). I like Oakland when I visit, like First Fridays, vibe is more relaxed. Thanks for sharing.
  - adrianratnapala 8y ago
    > you can likely find a community that shares those values. So did you look for such a community yourself, or did it just happen? Either way, do you have any tips that maxsilver and others can use to find or create a good "microclimate"?
    - bcantrill 8y ago
      Yes, we absolutely sought out a community that shared our values; it didn't just happen. And it wasn't easy or quick; it took us a while to identify a community, and then a while more to find a house here (with our objective to find a house before our oldest entered kindergarten). In terms of tips: spend spare time trying a community on for size; go to its parks, walk its streets, talk to its inhabitants, meet its neighborhood groups. And importantly, figure out where you're willing to compromise. (For example, if walkability is important to you (and it is to us), you will almost certainly be compromising on lot size and house size: walkable neighborhoods usually have high density, which likely means smaller dwellings more tightly packed.) None of this is easy, but finding a community that matches your values (or at least isn't inconsistent with them) is worth the effort: it's one of the most important decisions you'll make in your adult life, and merits special time and attention.
orbitur 8y ago
I believe it's accurate for a subset of middle class fams, and more higher class stay-at-home moms and families who can afford nannies. They exist, but most families don't have the time and money.
avemg 8y ago
It's not accurate. In a country of 325 million, you'll surely find some examples of it, but it's not been my experience as the father of two young children.
jawilson2 8y ago
I live in the suburbs of north chicago. This weekend my 8 year old had a friend ride his bike to our house. They rode bikes up and down our street while our two younger kids tagged along, and they went and played in the creek up the road for an hour. Then they came back and played capture the flag and basketball, then came in and had a popsicle and played Super Smash Bros. At no point did my wife or I talk to his parents, aside from "X would like to come over sometime Saturday, will you be around?" Apart from the Smash Bros., it could have been a scene from Andy Griffith or something. If it matters, this is from a pretty wealthy area (Michael Jordan's mansion is about 10 minutes up the road from us).

nikmobi 8y ago

> Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. Wait, what? Parents are paying other parents for play dates these days?

StavrosK 8y ago
Oh wow, that sounds insane to me.
jimktrains2 8y ago
I think/hope GP is being sarcastic. I've never seen anyone reimburse anyone for a playdate. I also live in a neighborhood where you see everyone outside regularly so a lot of it is spontaneous. Even with my wife's moms group that has arranged playdates, though, no one pays anyone else.
- Moru 8y ago
  That's just another way of paying. Next week it's your turn to host the playdate.
  - jimktrains2 8y ago
    That's significantly different than paying someone in cash. (Also, I didn't say they rotate, they do, but it's not among everyone. Some people have larger houses and are happier to host so they do it more often.)
lgessler 8y ago
It was satire--the point is that that is a certain style of parenting taken to its conclusion.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

bitwize 8y ago

Again, if this is the norm in America -- it only became so recently. Not early enough for the generation of kids raised under this norm to turn thirty. I just turned forty and for both me and my younger sister, hanging out with kids from the neighborhood spontaneously was routine for us.

maxerickson 8y ago
The spring time activity for the kids in the neighborhood here has been hitting snow piles with sticks. Now that the snow is gone one of them switched to hitting pieces of wood with a croquet mallet. The kids are alright.
- EADGBE 8y ago
  Agreed, all of this is overblown. Kids find fun things to do. That's what kids do; with or without "helicopter parents" and with or without technology. I'd bet most of these replies in this nature are written by child-less people giving their view of how things are so much worse now than when they were kids. They're still doing the same stuff they've always done (wasting time and having fun).
sykh 8y ago
It started in the 80s with the Jacob Wetterling [1] kidnapping and things like the McMartin preschool trial [2]. Stranger danger, fear of crime (it was much higher in the 80s than now) and whatnot has lead parents being overly afraid to let their kids roam. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Wetterling [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
- scarface74 8y ago
  In the 80s, the danger was very real in Atlanta.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979%E2%80%9381 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_murders_of_1979%E2%80%...

kfrzcode 8y ago

> what truly matters Paying off the debts owed to society of course

atomi 8y ago

> The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. - Kurt Vonnegut

gravity_123 8y ago

Reading this and replies to it saying how this is slowly becoming(or already is) the reality, I now get why stranger things is a highly acclaimed show. Not to take away anything from the storyline, direction, acting but one large appeal of the show was that it brought back memories. Parents of today lived the life portrayed by the kids in the show(cycling, staying overnight at friends house, etc) and yearn for a comeback of those days, long gone by for the most part.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Kuiper 8y ago
I've seen some online commenters (that I can only assume are younger millennials or Gen-Z'ers) call the show "unrealistic" due to the amount of autonomy the kids have, apparently not realizing that this is how many people grew up in the 1980's. It's hard not to feel wistful when you see that things have changed so much that people growing up today will watch a show where kids bicycle around town in the afternoon before going home for dinner and can't identify with it. I was born in 1990 and I feel like my childhood sort of straddled the line between these two realities. When my family moved to California in the early 90's, I made friends with the neighbor kids simply because they were the neighbor kids, and we many afternoons finding wandering around looking for ways to entertain ourselves. Kids would frequently play in the middle of the street. Nowadays, the streets of that neighborhood are empty. I'll go to the small nearby park, and maybe see kids if there's a youth sports league game or someone having a birthday party there. Having spent some time in Australia recently, one of the things that struck me is how often you see kids (often in their school uniforms) walking around town by themselves, going to get fast food with friends or hang out at the library. In the US, I've also noticed it in several ethnic neighborhoods (Jewish and Chinese neighborhoods, specifically). Part of me wonders how much of this is born out of affluence. On occasion, I'll find myself passing through a lower-income part of town, and the dynamic changes. You see kids walking to the store alone, maybe to buy things, maybe just to hang around and wait for their friends to stop by. Often, groups of kids consist of an older kid (maybe 10 years old) acting as a "caretaker" for a younger group of siblings. You'll be pumping gas, and someone at the opposite pump randomly strike up a conversation with you. If you're not used to it, it actually kind of catches you off guard. I know some people flee to suburbs specifically to avoid these kinds of interactions, but once you get past the initial surprise of, "huh, someone I don't know started talking to me just to talk to me, that doesn't happen every day," I actually find certain parts of it to be quite pleasant. It reminds me of how I used to live, and how I suspect my parents (and their parents) lived.

gumby 8y ago

That’s a pretty funny exaggeration but not an exaggeration by much. That is, I’ve seen examples of it all. But I brought up a (now) 20 year old in Palo Alto without the scheduling, tutoring, driving around and other nonsense, and he did get into a “top” school (whatever “top” really means). But it did show a clear partition in which kids he could in practice be friends with. OTOH he was able to pocket quite a bit of cash tutoring some pampered kids!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

andrepd 8y ago

>Parents can then venmo the other family for the time-cost of the play-date. Wow. Surely this is hyperbole?

EADGBE 8y ago
None of that isn't.

jazzyk 8y ago

>This ensures that more time in adulthood is dedicated to what truly matters, which is.... ...mindless consumption