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In Defense of the Play DateThey don't have to be occasions for mothers to silently judge one another.

By Emily BazelonPosted Thursday, July 30, 2009, at 4:14 PM ET

One of the most biting scenes in The Group, Mary McCarthy's acerbic sendup of female friendship and aspiration, takes place on a play date. Priss Crockett, the grind of the Vassar class of 1933 and now a doctor's wife, is walking through Central Park with her toddler Stephen. She runs into a fellow alum, Norine Schmittlapp, and her 3-month-old baby, Ichabod. "Aren't you afraid he'll be called 'Icky' in school?" Priss asks before barely resisting the urge to tell Norine to raise the hood of the baby's carriage, to shield his head from the sun.

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The two women are off and running for an afternoon of sniping and clashing. Norine mentions letting Ichabod sleep in the bed with her at night. Priss can't believe she doesn't know that "under no circumstances, not even in a crowded slum home, should a baby be permitted to sleep with an adult." Stephen sees Ichabod sucking on a pacifier and reaches up to touch the unknown object. Priss snatches his hand away. Norine brings up toilet training, the source of Priss' most bitter shame, since Stephen is not performing properly. Norine's theory is that children should train themselves. "Where in the world did you get such ideas?" Priss asks. The women repair to Norine's apartment, where a butler whisks Stephen away. The butler later returns to whisper in Norine's ear. "Stephen shat," she casually reports, to Priss' humiliation, even as she lets Stephen's nursemaid clean up the mess.

In the last minutes in this strange apartment, Stephen plunges his hand into the neck of the nursemaid's dress, and Priss, desperate to distract him, gives him a piece of chocolate cake. Stephen, a chocolate virgin, doesn't know what to do with it. "Look! It's good," Priss tells him, chewing. McCarthy makes Stephen's corruption complete with this last line of the chapter: "Soon he was greedily eating chocolate cake, from a Jewish bakery, with fudge frosting."

McCarthy wrote The Group nearly half a century ago, in 1963, and she was depicting the high-end New York of 25 years earlier. And yet her portrayal of the ill-fated play date is all too up-to-date. In recent books as well, the play date takes a satirical beating. It's the site of missed connections between mothers, a time for sitting in judgment and airing theories of superiority rather than enjoying the company of another adult (or the children who are supposed to be at the center of the whole encounter). These depictions of the play date ring true to me in the way that cartoon portraits do—the features are exaggerated but also familiar. At the same time, I'd like to rescue the play date from its maligned position on the front lines of the mommy wars. Because sometimes, mothers who have different styles unexpectedly come together over their kids. Fathers, too.

You can see a glimpse of this in Kate Walbert's new novel A Short History of Women. We've moved to the Manhattan of today. A single mother named Fran calls Liz, the narrator, to arrange an after-school play date between their small daughters. "I just need to keep Matilda from losing her gourd," Fran says of her child. "I understand," Liz says. "Do you?" says Matilda's mother. "You do?" The women talk while the girls play My Pretty Pony behind a closed bedroom door. Liz does her share of judging—she thinks that Fran has painted her living room "the entirely wrong color"—but she keeps it to herself, even when Fran confides about abruptly leaving her husband behind in San Francisco. Walbert writes in Liz's voice: "The truth is, she's enjoying herself. It's a playdate, she finds herself thinking, I'm on a date for play."

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker.

COMMENTS

I read an excerpt of Kate Walbert's book when it was published in the New Yorker last year and felt that the scene described between the two moms, Liz and Fran, was fraught with an unnecessary tension. Maybe some play dates are like that, but really, most are not. Play dates are not difficult, they are not tense, and moms don't sit there judging each other all the time.

I've met some amazing people through my son and his daycare and his preschool. They are now our family's great friends and I hope that we're all friends for a long time. Before my son was in daycare, and we used to go to the park at the beach every other day, where we encountered moms all the time, and everyone seemed isolated, yet no one was ready to extend themselves. In all those days at the beach that summer, I only met 3 or 4 women who I even exchanged emails with, but nothing came of them. Why was that? We were all isolated moms with young toddlers, and yet it wasn't enough to come together.

-- rocket777
(To reply, click here)

I've found that the parents of only children are DESPERATE for play dates. The prospect of a day alone with their children terrifies them. I'm not assuming this; they TELL me. I confess that I (meanly) think to myself "if you want your child to have a playmate, have another kid!"

My two older children play well with each other. If one is invited to a play date, I will make it happen, but I don't seek them out. For me, it's a hassle to drop them off and pick them up with the other sibling and a newborn and the other child is jealous and sad that she doesn't have a play date. It's just a big pain.

As I type this, the two older kids are playing together so nicely. I'm sipping iced tea and spouting my opinion.

They will be older soon enough, and will be spending plenty of time with their friends. For now, we're having our own fun as a family.

-- pollyannacowgirl
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