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Manhattan Playdate Scene I have lived in New York before. I left for Montreal after a six-year long love affair with the city. John Steinbeck wrote that once you’ve lived here no place else is good enough. He was right. But he never moved back as a mother of two. Today, Upper East Side playgrounds are ruthless. Many women work full-time planning their children’s schedules, from birth to grad school. There are play dates. There are as many toddler classes as a college course guide. There are clothes, toys, strollers, and perfume to keep up with. Babar, Mickey Mouse and Gucci boast toddler colognes. If you are pushing less than a Maclaren stroller, fuhggedaboudit. Toys are bought off-sale at FAO Schwartz. In winter, miniature versions of runway couture scamper across jungle gyms. In the summer, children in white linen, ironed and labeled with designer names worn by broker fathers and psychiatrist mothers, stroll in Central Park. Whatever the season, play dates are de rigueur. The nannies told me. They did before berating me for being a housewife with a part-time writing job and no hired help. “Why are you taking care of your children?” one nanny asked me. She truly looked shocked. Trying to get a date for my daughters, ages two and four, has proven to be worse than the adult singles scene. Looking for compatible playmates mirror scenes from dating hell in the series Sex and the City, after the gestation period. What four-year-olds are compatible anyway? My older daughter gets along well enough with the combed and ironed set. Her sister just ignores them and their guardians. One day in Central Park, in the shadows of Fifth Avenue, my oldest played happily with Tyler, a boy her age. For an hour, they chucked a football, treasure hunted, climbed and ran in an aimless way that made me envy their abandon. Tyler might be the one. I introduced myself to Tyler’s mother between her cellular phone conversations. I hadn’t asked anyone out for a date in years. My heart raced. I blushed. Tyler’s mum shook her head. Tyler, that irresistible little tike, was absolutely unavailable. “Sorry,” she said while punching numbers into her phone. “Tyler’s booked solid for a month. I can’t help you.” “Maybe we could exchange numbers?” “Don’t have a pen,” she said. She left to join a wall of other mothers chattering on their phones, watching from a distance as their children played together. I don’t think Sarah Jessica Parker has this much trouble with her newborn. But I’m a reporter. So I didn’t give up after that first rejection. Maybe the park wasn’t a good venue. Maybe it was Fifth Avenue. Maybe it was me. It couldn’t be my children. I didn’t like the way I started to feel. In Montreal, I could make three phone calls and be stormed with the girls’ friends for a cookie baking session. Here, nothing. I needed a new approach. I combed through parents magazines. I discovered classes for tots with tony price tags to match. There’s an art farm, where animals visit each class followed by art or music lessons featuring pig, cow, or bunny themes. There’s an introduction to modern dance for three-year-olds. There’s a Suzuki-based class for toddlers with “finger-strengthening, physical coordination, and fine motor skills development games” for future violin lessons. After I take a loan for one semester of classes, I might just score a play date for one of my children. They might actually meet some children with similar schedules. Maybe they need a day planner. Or an events manager. Or perhaps an agent. Rejections haunted me until one day a nanny pulled her shy little charge over to me. “You’re new here,” she said. “Yes.” “How about a play date?” “Sure, when?” The boy peed in his pants and started to cry. Was the dating scene too much for him? I never had this much trouble picking up men. This is much, much worse. Not only am I rejected but so are the precious children I spent a cumulative forty hours delivering and four years loving madly. Self-doubt flooded my thoughts. Even though neither of my children can read, write, or work a telephone, I started to think that I was ruining their social lives. So I became aloof. I’ve given up the Upper East Side dating scene. I don’t try chatting up mothers or nannies. I’m taking my youngest daughter’s lead. I ignore them. Aloof seems to be working at the park. Parents are talking to me. Nannies are approaching me. A park activities coordinator even asked me to be a storyteller. A herd of children rushed me that day. I loved peeking at their wide eyes waiting for me to turn the pages of Clifford’s Halloween. Guilt swept over me. This might lead somewhere. I thought about announcing my phone number over the PA system. Instead I shouted Happy Halloween. Later, I got stood up for a trick-or-treating play date. Since then, I have learned about the secret but well-entrenched parenting establishment in Manhattan. Play by the rules, and you can join. Rebel and suffer double generation alienation. The well-heeled Upper East Siders probably invented the establishment to weed out walk-up apartment folk, like me. Except now middle-class parents are taking out loans to send their children to $900 gymnastics classes and $10,000 pre-school. Is that to score play dates? Or are arts-and-crafts, gym, and story-time worth five figures? The idea of two-year-olds going on a date is as ridiculous as baby thongs. Childless friends laugh about tales of playground politics. But they pale at the fact that once they marry and mate, the dating hell they face now will haunt their progeny. The New York parenthood establishment makes me pine for a new system. It would be one that allows children to meet on their streets for hopscotch and stickball. Right now, socialization, ie. mindless playing, seems to be planned ahead of time and jammed between fencing, flute, French, and cooking lessons. The reality of two-year-olds needing a weekly planner is plain sad. I am not buying into it. And I’m not alone. I have a few friends with children. We see each other regularly. They are play date outcasts, like me. Our children get along. They seem compatible. My oldest just started ballet classes because she loves to dance. My youngest still ignores children at the park. But if I ever get an urge to join New York’s parenthood establishment, I’m heading to the East Village to try out the dating scene there.
Eileen Travers is a writer and reporter whose work has appeared in Time Magazine Canada, People Magazine, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette and CanWest News Service. She is also a proud mom of two daughters. Between writing assignments and managing her kids' play date schedules, she is currently at work at her first novel, Fine.
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