The Couple Without Kids

Last night we hosted a very casual late summer/early fall barbecue.  I invited our usual guests, two other couples with one toddler each.  We always make a perfect group, since my husband and I are also a couple with one toddler. 

Then my husband decided we should invite another couple we know, a couple without kids. Apparently men don't realize the major shift in dynamics that happens to friendships when a child is born. 

This is not to say that I have no childless friends, or that I refuse to hang out with childless people.  It's just to say that I think it's cruel to make this poor couple endure a toddler-centric barbecue when they are the only people who don't yet have a toddler of their own.

Here's how a toddler-centric barbecue goes.  The "evening" begins when everybody arrives at 4:30.  Anybody who is "fashionably late" is actually unintentionally late due to tantrums or naptime. Dinner gets assembled amid interrupted conversations and "can you please watch him so I can cook".  The worst part is right before dinner, when we are all staring at a table of long-awaited hot food, but instead must postpone our own eating to prepare food for toddlers.  Once toddlers are placed in high chairs with bibs and plate of bite-sized food, dinner can commence.  Dinner consists of shoveling down food as quickly as possible, in an attempt to finish before toddlers begin throwing their own food on the ground. 

After dinner there is no polite lingering at the table for conversation.  Once the kids start losing it and dinner is clearly winding down, the hostess leaps up and starts to clear the table.  "I'm sorry, were you finished?" she says as she is already scraping the person's plate into the trash.  She comments on how all polite dinner party etiquette goes out the window when toddlers are involved.  The childless couple must be appalled.  The other two moms are helping out to rush the process along.  They have looming bedtime issues, too. 

There's no waiting to let your dinner digest before dessert.  The three-mom team has managed to simultaneously get the table cleared, the dishes washed, and the dessert plated in a matter of minutes.  "Get your own dessert in the kitchen," I bark to the other guests.  Again, the mad dash to get kids in high chairs and set up with food and bibs.  Again, the speed-eating on the part of the adults.  Everybody eats, cleans up, and goes home.  This is actually the best part of a toddler-centric barbecue.  Guests aren't overly-concerned about when it's polite to leave.  Hosts aren't sitting there wondering when these people are going to leave.  It's just understood that bedtime = the party's over.

Somewhere in that tornado of a party we managed to get in some conversation.  We talked about library story hour and the toddler music class at the park district.  We talked about the complicated issues surrounding whether or not to have another child.  Oh, and during dinner, Mom Guest #1 talked about how proud she was that her daughter had pooped in the potty.  Mom Guest #2 seemed to be making mental notes to assist in her own potty-training endeavors.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice said, Change the subject.  You're alienating the childless couple.  But it felt like a lost cause.  I couldn't even think of anything else to talk about, at least for an extended period of time. 

Of course, in retrospect I can think of conversation topics: television, current events, the weather.  But inevitably, unexplainably, the conversation would somehow get back to toddler issues.  It would go something like:

Me: What did you guys think of Sarah Palin's speech at the RNC?

Mom Guest #1: I don't know, I kept getting interrupted because Child woke up THREE TIMES during the speech.  She's teething.

Mom Guest #2: Have you tried Orajel?

Mom Guest #1: I prefer homeopathic teething tablets. 

And there goes our conversation about politics.

So, childless couple, I am sorry for the crappy evening we gave you.  I'm sorry that your Saturday night plans were over by 8:00.  If it makes you feel any better, there's some part of us that wonders, When did we become these people?  Before kids, we were the couple who swore that having kids wouldn't change us.  We wouldn't be the people who couldn't talk about anything besides our kids.  We wouldn't arrange our schedules around our children's, because who cares if a child stays up a little past bedtime on a Saturday night?  (Remember, this was our pre-kid selves talking.)  Besides, we could just get a babysitter anytime we wanted to do something without the kids, right?  (See this post for the details of my challenges with babysitters.) 

On the plus side, I think having kids really strengthens your relationships with other moms.  The Mom Guests at this party are people I probably wouldn't even be in touch with if it weren't for our similarly-aged kids.  I know both of them from circumstances under which they would normally be labeled casual aquintances. We all became friends because of our kids, and I'm so glad we did. 

I don't have any actual, biological sisters, but I feel like these other moms have become like my sisters.  So even though having a kid has caused me to have some really crummy dinner parties, it has also made me a part of this wonderful sisterhood.  I hope the couple without kids gets to find that out someday, too. 

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog Post.