A bit of a rant, pre-sorry but so sad and annoyed right now.
Went to my favorite barber shop today. It's built on being nice, upscale, and men's haircuts. They do the works, good cuts, beard trimming/shaping, hot towel, the whole thing, and it's built to be man's place, they have a pool table, they have a couple of kegerators, they'll pour you a whiskey while you wait. Very nice.
(Note I say man's but really if you're a woman/any other gender and you like that sort of thing, then awesome. I mean man in the masculine sense)
Until recently this was my favorite place, but apparently it's gotten on the mom groups online and now the last few times I've gone it's just filled with children and moms. Where I could go and get a whiskey while I wait and find someone to shoot pool with, now kids are literally running around and as for the pool table they're just throwing the balls around. Meanwhile the moms are either talking with each other or hovering over Bradley getting his hair cut and how cute it is.
On top of it all, because there was a group of them instead of my normal 20 min wait it was almost a 2 hours wait. I just walked out.
I'm just so tired of it, this place obviously was built for adults but god forbid we have any adult places that aren't "actually meant for children". I mean obviously it was built for children, there's 2 kegs and a shelf of nice scotch but yes, bring all of your children here.
How come every place that used to be for adults is now a child zone? My favorite breweries used to be great places to let off steam after work and now I have kids playing tag in the middle of them. I flat out don't go to movies anymore because even the super late showings are just dumping grounds for inattentive parents to leave their kids. And god forbid you ever mention outside a community like this that you want to drink a beer without a kid running around or you're literally the devil who should be shunned.
Anyway, this isn't going anywhere specifically, I'm just really sad, and I didn't get my haircut today.
As someone who has kids, it's a fucking Act of Congress to get child care. I wouldn't trust my parents to watch a potted plant, and her parents really aren't interested in the whole grandparent thing. Hiring a babysitter is both sketchy and expensive, and asking a friend is awkward since
So, it's just easier to take them everywhere, and if we can't take them, we don't go.
Maybe take them to kid oriented places at first until they learn how to handle themselves around others.
Chuck E. Cheese, McDonalds playland, etc.
Then your Denny's, Chillis, Marie Callendars, Applebees
Then nicer places if they dont cause problems.
We try to avoid adultier places if we can help it, but sometimes there's no helping taking your kid to the DMV and just having to get your shit chewed out by the security guard. In general, though, we just avoid unnecessary trips out.
Ah, so just to recap, you chose to have kids, they made socializing difficult, and now everyone else has to deal with your "crazy heathens".
These are reasons why people choose not to have kids, not reasons to justify ruining other people's times because you decided to have kids and it had predictable outcomes.
The question asked, I answered. To be clear, we didn't specifically sit down and plot to make you and other people miserable when we decided to have kids. Also, we don't let them run wild, which usually results in us just leaving because they're going to start melting down over not being able to go harass strangers who just want to be left alone. Besides that, we try to avoid adultier venues, but sometimes shit happens. When I say we normally don't go unless we can take them, the emphasis is on the 'we normally don't go'. We kinda figured that the grandparents would at least be able to help, as has been the case for millennia, but it turned out that my mom has all the parenting skills of a pair of scissors and her parents want almost nothing to do with it. I'll save you the sob story and just say that it's been fucking difficult, and sometimes it feels like my brain is going to melt out of my ears; we're not fucking sitting around laughing about ruining your night out, and that's even if we do go out, which we usually don't.