Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about birthdays. For one thing, I’m writing this on the very day I turn 37. For another, you might’ve heard that America’s got a big one coming up later this year: 250. Old enough to stop squabbling and act its age. But right now, the only birthday that matters in our household is my daughter’s, and it’s coming up in two weeks.
New York City children’s birthday parties – at least many of the ones I’ve witnessed – are unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Not so much parties as highly coordinated tests of moral conscience. They’re diplomatic summits involving balloons, sugar and, yes, perhaps a touch of low-level psychological warfare. The key, however, is that a good party must be presented as though the hapless parents casually threw the whole thing together on a whim. Honestly, we had so much fun planning it! More than the pomp and circumstance, though, it’s the politics that haunt me in the middle of the night, when I could be doomscrolling or counting sheep. Last year, I committed the Manhattan mortal crime of not inviting every child in her class and, in doing so, swiftly made myself into a social pariah.
I am not renting a petting zoo. There will be no magicians or off-duty Broadway stars
I could be mistaken but it’s my impression that in the UK – nay, in most other countries – this would not only have been permitted but expected. Surely most children’s birthday parties are governed by the straightforward realities of limited budgets and limited patience. You invite six to eight children to a bowling alley, somebody cries because they didn’t get the cupcake they wanted and when everything is said and done, we all head home to watch Finding Nemo. But Manhattan operates under a different system. Here, birthdays are exercises in radical inclusion. To exclude one child from a party is not viewed as a simple logistical decision but as the opening act of a future HBO limited series about privilege and emotional damage. Can you hear the Succession theme? A few days after my daughter’s party last year, I realized something was wrong when a parent sent me a text message short in content but rich in subtext: “I’m just wondering whether there was a reason you didn’t invite my son to your daughter’s birthday party.”
In fact, there was a reason. My daughter doesn’t like her son. But you’ll be glad – or disappointed, depending on your appetite for drama – to know that I chose a diplomatic response. “We couldn’t afford to invite all the kids in the class, so we let her choose a few.” That was met with the only thing worse than outright hostility: passive aggression. “I understand. It’s fine,” she wrote. “He’s just really upset.” A year on, I still feel a rush of shame if I see her at the school gates. I know, it’s totally ridiculous. We are grown adults feuding over the social dynamics of eight-year-olds as though we’re negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. But I can’t help it. I really care. And that’s the terrible thing about parenting in New York. You arrive imagining yourself to be a rational person and the next thing you know you’re lying awake at 2 a.m. wondering whether pompoms at the craft station might help repair your reputation. This year I am determined to be more resilient. To stand firm against the increasingly elaborate expectations of the Manhattan children’s birthday-industrial complex. To remember my daughter is turning eight, and not taking her company public on the New York Stock Exchange.
I am not renting a petting zoo. In fact, there will be no live animals, or magicians, or off-duty Broadway stars. This year, we are doing what my daughter actually wants. We’re making cupcakes with her closest friends. She wants sugar, gifts and to be allowed to lick the icing bowl at the end. America may be turning 250 with fireworks, parades and commemorative branding visible from space. Good luck to it. My own celebration strategy this year is considerably less ambitious. Some might call it surrender. In true New Yorker style, I call it self-care.
Comments