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Comment by radicalbyte | Hacker News Reader

As a father from The Netherlands, I can tell you that no parent would let their 5 year old have a birthday party unsupervised by adults. If they did then you expect social services to get involved.

What actually happens is that the HOST PARENTS supervise the group. So if your kids are invited to a friend's birthday party then yeah, you don't stay. I assume that it's the same in the US and pretty much every other country.

We also don't leave our four-year-old kids in the car alone. Well, some people do, which is why the local newspapers have been full of stories about the parents getting arrested for it and social services getting involved.

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Netherlands is getting more anglo saxonized to be honest but we have some restraint luckily as we are ‘nuchter’ (down to earth/not prone to overreaction). And yes the points of having unsupervised birthday parties at 5 is just bad really in many respects. However many things are over the top in NL now and more so in the UK (I saw) and US (I read, so might be press). In southern Spain, where I have lived for the past 10 years, I feel it is more like it should be; young kids go alone to school, infants join their parents for parties, everyone plays with them and when they fall asleep; they go to sleep in the bedroom of the host. Random strangers on the streets pick up and hug your kids etc; stuff which is alien in many parts of the world; people would call for the police. Very paranoid and weird to me, also in NL. Maybe justified 0.00001% of the time but ofcourse in general not justified at all; most people just want to be nice. It is like the overbearing reaction to terrorism they had in India (I am referring to airports and every building of size has multiple bag scanners, metal detectors and guards; it makes me feel more unsafe than anywhere I have been and I travel a lot); because a few people were evil they just assume everyone is carrying bombs everywhere unless they prove otherwise. And it is not as if it stops bad things from happening.

why are random strangers picking up and hugging children? that sounds odd even for laid back European, unless we talk about babies accompanied by mother and older people wanting to touch cute baby, but child able to walk?

It is Anglo saxon ; Australia has the paranoia as well. Not as bad as india but today hkg to mel was pretty shit.

Nobody in that article hinted towards children having the party on their own, of course it's the host parents who are watching them.

This article was trying to make the claim that at many birthday parties in the US, all the childrens' parents will stay at the party. I don't know how common that is, but some cursory searching does indicate that it's a thing.

What are these US parents actually doing at these parties, then, if they do stay?

Drink coffee and try to socialise with other (equally agonised) parents because you somehow have to manage to spend two hours together until the party is over?

That sounds about the most horrible way to spend your time, to the point where I'd eventually consider not taking my kid to these parties in the first place.

OK I'm a parent who stays, actually its not that bad, we're friends with most of the parents and its a good time to catch up and chat.

Same here, but it's nice not to feel obligated to stay, which i think is the difference.

If you want to stay (and are wanted) that speaks to a strong sense of community which is nice

> What are these US parents actually doing at these parties, then, if they do stay?

Chat with other parents—but then my kids are young enough that the parties we go to are still mostly for kids of my friends.

What are you going on about? No one said parties in the Netherlands were not under adult supervision.

Parents in the USA (and increasingly in Canada) WILL stay and actively interfere in the party:

“That game is too rough for Jenny.”

“My child doesn’t drink soda, I’m just going to run to your fridge for Perrier.”

“Don’t you have enough cake for all the adults who stayed uninvited?”

Worse, as a host, you often need to run interference between the bulldozer parents and the 5 year olds who were dropped off.

> I assume that it's the same in the US and pretty much every other country.

No, in the US all parents are expected to stay. Not just the host parents.

Please tell me this is a joke. A birthday party (in Australia) is an invitation for you to dump your kids for 3 hours. How do the kids have any fun with so many adults around?

no, that is not a joke

I really don’t understand this. Given that the US is also a place where you put three-month-olds into daycare so that the mother can continue working.

You mean, because the mother needs to keep working because she has no other choice.

Things like this does not mean that the other isn't true. Just because one works doesn't mean that the rest of her time isn't expected to revolve around her children.

I guess that makes some perverse sort of sense.

That's a great way to put a cultural cap on the number of kids you can feasibly raise.

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