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.

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.

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"?

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.

Here in Japan if someone throws a house party it's common for everyone to pitch in $10-$30. Before I moved to Japan I had never heard of such a thing. In the USA when I or my family through a party for friends it was always our treat (we paid everything) and anytime I visited a friend's party they never asked for or expected money. The closest to that kind of thing was a "potluck" party where every one brought some food or drink.

Now that I've lived in Japan for a long time I've started to see the benefits of paying. It spreads the burden. It makes it easier to consider throwing a party since you know it won't cost you $50 to $200 in expenses.

Also in Japan it's extremely common to rent an an entire bar, space, restaurant for parties and tell all your friends, come to my party, $30 a person. Before I was lived here that idea would have blown my mind? $30? I'm not going if it even costs $5!. Now that I'm used to it I just see it has "paying for experience" and or "the cost of having fun" and I see that it enables cool venues and also places to be loud without annoying neighbors (since clubs and bars are usually designed for sound). I've gone to the opposite extreme where I'm disappointed when my western friends complain about having to contribute.

So, paying for playdates sounds like it might have positives. More playdates. Maybe easier for the organizer to stock all the various alternative diets the different kids need. etc...

But as I said earlier, 20XX is making yesterdays satirical jokes and turning it into today's headlines.

The problem is that this behavior is driven by a tiny monitory, and supported by the rest.

The honest answer is to be the jerk who doesn't go along with it. The only way we can stop being victim to societal trends is to go against the flow.

This. Or to put it another way: "You know who's a more interesting person in adulthood? Someone whose parents didn't bow to peer pressure when they were a kid."

FFS. If you're a parent, you're supposed to be setting an example. Not giving in to the same impulses we ostensibly teach our children to resist.

You absolutely can opt out of socialization for both you and your kid. But, that is what you are doing there.

There's also, you know, letting your kid hang out with other kids organically. They do that naturally, you know?

If other parents expect planned meetups, then "organically" is exactly that. Even if they take no issue random meets in principle, they already planned most time for other things. Their kids are not outside to be randomly met. Often other kids don't even live within walkable distance.

For that matter 3-6 years old don't "organically" start to visit each other alone without parents. How exactly you expect that to happen, really?

That is: the caricature's funny, but it sounds like _way_ too much damn work.

They exist, but most families don't have the time and money.

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).