Watching her toddler happily playing with toy blocks on the rug, Manhattan mom Christina was pleased to have been invited to the apartment of another mother she’d met at the park.
Then a familiar phrase wrecked the occasion. “Have you tried the It Works wrap?” asked the hostess, whipping out a pamphlet for the cellulite-minimizing product sold via at-home parties. “Trust me, you want to be part of this.”
“If I had a dime for the number of times [at play dates] I’ve been asked to join a Rodan + Fields skin-care trial or sell dōTerra essential oils, I’d be rich,” says Christina, a 28-year-old Upper West Sider, who, like everyone interviewed for this article, asked that her last name be withheld so as not to offend any mommy pals.
“You’re cornered because your kid is there playing — you’re stuck in the middle of a sales pitch without the option to leave.”
Christina’s situation is an increasingly common one in the ultracompetitive world of New York City play dates, where prearranged get-togethers are less about the kids and more about the giant-size egos — and financial interests — of the parents. Whether it’s to gather gossip from nannies, further real-estate dreams, or push your tot to make friends with a celebrity’s offspring, parents need a dog-eat-dog mentality to navigate the traps.
‘You’re cornered because your kid is there playing — you’re stuck in the middle of a sales pitch without the option to leave.’
- Christina, a young Upper West Side mom
The phenomenon is explored in the new book “The Playdate: Parents, Children, and the New Expectations of Play” by Tamara R. Mose, an associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College.
“Play dates are often seen as opportunities where the parent can gain a social or career advantage,” says Mose, who interviewed 66 parents, teachers and caregivers across the five boroughs. “They’re not necessarily about the children’s relationships, but those of the parents’.”
“The worst thing about parenting is the other parents,” sniffs Aisha, 41, the spouse of an NYC real-estate agent. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been hit up for apartments on play dates.”
A classic example is the “low-paid” actress who badgered her to help secure a place in the affordable Brooklyn apartment building Aisha’s husband was working on.
In the book, Mose meets Anna, the Brooklyn-based CEO of a high-end toy company, who finagled things so her daughter could play with a certain girl from school. It turned out the girl’s father was an in-demand set designer Anna wanted to hire for photo shoots.
As the author writes, “When the man wasn’t being used anymore because of Anna’s new creative direction, that relationship was severed . . . causing tension between the children, who stopped having play dates.
Mose argues that, over the last 20 years, since indoor play dates have replaced more casual interactions in playgrounds and parks — with helicopter parents worried about pedophiles, and the perceived increase in violence in the big bad city — a fresh set of rules is in place.
Companies such as familystickers.com now even manufacture calling cards for children to exchange with their parents’ information on it.
“Back in the day, kids could be kids, playing among themselves, but now everything is mediated by parents,” Mose tells The Post. “The issues that always come up — like handling the bully or appropriately sharing toys — are supervised and dealt with by the adults.”
And that can cause tensions.
Take 43-year-old Catherine from Queens. She recalls a hellish play date where her 8-year-old son was pursued by a friend wielding a baseball bat.
“It was horrible because he was actually going to beat him up,” she recalls. “What was worse was that the mom, who was really touchy-feely and crunchy, wanted to sit her son down to talk about it.
“Most mothers would shout, ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ if they saw their kid chasing someone down with a bat, but not this one. It was the last time we had a play date with them.”
Then there’s the case of 40-year-old Jane from the Upper East Side, who was appalled by the obviously learned behavior of her son’s over-privileged classmate.
Toward the end of a play date — supervised by Jane and a preschool teacher she’d hired for the occasion — the kids were instructed to help clean up.
“The little girl pointed toward her nanny, who was sitting on the couch, and said: ‘I don’t do cleanup. She does.’ The nanny sprang up immediately to do her ‘duty’ while the teacher and I were left open-mouthed,” Jane recalls.
“I said, ‘That’s not the way we do things in our house,’ and the girl begrudgingly started to pick things up.”
Says Mose, “It is usually the host who is supposed to create the boundaries because, again, play dates are not about the children. But if the visitors’ rules are different from the host’s rules, there can be clashes.”
Mother-of-one Katie once had to handle a hysterical parent who couldn’t believe it when her own boys enthusiastically grabbed the Nerf guns that Catherine’s son plays with regularly.
“She was screaming, ‘We don’t play with guns in our household!’ And I calmly replied, ‘Neither do we; they’re Nerf guns!’ ” recalls Catherine, who says she enforces rules about the toys, such as not allowing the kids to shoot each other in the face.
“It became very awkward because the mom continued to freak out, even though her sons were frothing at the mouth to have a go.
“Afterward, I never heard from her again, and that was fine.”
Repeatedly throughout her research, Mose found that upper- middle-class parents actively seek out children of similar social, racial and cultural status for play dates, a trend she calls the People Like Us (PLU) syndrome.
“You are going to bring home whomever you feel most comfortable with — somebody who looks like you and is of the same class background. One woman said, ‘My child interacts with all different kids at the playground,’ so I questioned her: ‘But who are the ones you bring back to your home?’ ” says Mose. “Then she reacted differently and said, ‘Yeah, they’re not that diverse.’
“When I asked white people in my interviews, ‘Do you have play dates with black children?’ they’d have to think for a while. And then they could only point to one case.”
Even though the kids are well under the voting age, PLU syndrome also applies to politics. One Park Slope mother of two, Sarah, 29, told The Post how her 2-year-old was denied a play date because Sarah is, God help her, a member of the GOP.
“I was at a toddler music class and chatting pleasantly with one of the moms,” remembers Sarah. “I asked if she’d want to meet at the park before class the following week.
“Her response was: ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I try to limit my child’s interactions with Republicans.’ ”
Sarah — who was once admonished by a woman in a Gowanus Whole Foods for handing her baby a nonorganic banana — found the episode hilarious. But Mose is less amused.
“It is all part of the exclusion that happens during the play-date experience,” she says. “It has nothing to do with the fact that children might enjoy each other’s company regardless of their parents’ politics.”
The sociologist also uncovered the faux pas that is organizing a play date — and sending your nanny to supervise.
“The [nannies] felt it was an invasion of their time . . . because they’re being forced to interact with a stranger,” she says.
‘I asked if she’d want to meet at the park before class … Her response was: “Well, I’m sorry, but I try to limit my child’s interactions with Republicans.”‘
- Sarah on why a fellow Park Slope mom turned down a playdate with her child
Nanny Connie, a Seventh-day Adventist, felt “inherent discomfort” when she entered a Fort Greene apartment staffed by another child-care provider who didn’t share her religious views.
“She immediately objected to the way [the other woman] communicated because she was cursing and talking about her employers in a negative way,” recounts Mose. “Connie stayed for about an hour, and then excused herself from the play date.”
Play dates also tend to reinforce class barriers when a nanny is invited to bring her ward to a parent’s home.
Catherine, the Nerf-gun mom, laughs when she recalls a neighbor’s nanny bringing over her charges.
“The nanny would tell me private stuff about the family, which I really didn’t want to know. She’d tell me that she wasn’t getting paid enough,” Catherine says. “And the ‘hot dad’ wasn’t so hot anymore when she told me how he’d laze on the couch, picking at his feet.
“He also used to yell at the nanny to bring him soup. Not very sexy.”
This being New York, there are certain circumstances when parents will rabidly pursue play dates for their children, no matter whether their kids are friends or enemies.
“If there is a celebrity — even a D-list reality star — in your kid’s class, people will be swooning over them at parents’ evenings to try and secure a play date,” adds Harriet, 38, from the West Village. Her two offspring attend a top Manhattan prep school where Oscar-winning movie stars also send their kids.
“People will do anything to take a peek inside a [star’s] apartment or attend a birthday party, because it’s almost bound to be lavish,” explains Mose.
Harriet reveals how one family ingratiated themselves to an A-list actor by offering a driver to take their daughter and the star’s child to dance lessons.
“The mother was a bit of a starf - - ker who wanted to get into [the actor’s] apartment to see what kind of furniture and gadgets they had,” says the mom.
In May 2012, Page Six reported how moms in Park Slope were in a flap about handsome “Smash” actor Jack Davenport setting up in the tony neighborhood with his actress wife, “Doctor Who” star Michelle Gomez, and their son, Harry.
Swooning posts popped up on Facebook: “Just spotted Jack Davenport in the local playground. Bet you wish you’d been there, Brooklyn girlies.”
“Everybody wanted to be invited to the Davenports’ place for a play date,” a neighborhood source tells The Post. “They were definitely the ‘in couple’ for a while.
“When one woman who lived in the same building accidentally got Davenport’s mail delivery, it was a good excuse to go around to introduce herself and have their kids play together.”
But what better prize than a play date with the grandchild of the potential next president of the United States?
“Some people have been going to Friday night services at the synagogue near Madison Square Park where Chelsea Clinton goes with Marc Mezvinsky because they want their kid to play with [their 1-year-old daughter] Charlotte,” says Upper West Sider Christina.
If it gets them one step closer to an ice-cream social at the White House, who can blame them?