Do you socialise as a couple?

[darkbluenails]

Do you socialise as a couple? Especially with other parent couples from school? My son is last year of primary and we've never had other parents round, just discovered there's lots of groups from school who have dinner partys etc regularly since p1. We've never been asked to any but then we've never invited anyone. I worry this has affected my son's friendships as the ppl who socialise together their children are all tight. Found out some of them have even been on holidays together.

I'm feeling guilty and a bit fomo. My husband and I are a bit awkward and the thought of having people round to our disfunctional house panics me but worried I should have been doing this for years. I don't have any close friends in this area and I thought other parents were all similar, it's shook me up a bit to find so many hang out with their husbands too. I know I'm being unreasonable as ppl can do what they want but just feel I've wasted years and should have done better for my son. Go easy on me. Do you have other parents/friends round a lot?

Don’t think we ever socialised with parents from school, no. We had school friends round to play, but I already had all the friends I wanted as an adult, so didn’t pretend or force myself to socialise with others to benefit the children.
Mine are adults now, their friends are a mix of old school/uni friends, people originally met online and from shared interests/clubs.

We used to socialise with other parents and the children would play at the time but not necessarily at school. It depended really on whether we met other couples through children being friends,band even then then siblings didn't mix at school.

We socialised as a couple pre ds but we don't now. Ds's needs would make that impossible but I have no great desire to anyway. I would rather spend that time either just with dh or with my own friends. The recent couple socialising has all been at family events and only family come to our house. Going on holidays with other parents doesn't appeal at all.

You don't have anyone round to your house? At all? I can see how that would be damaging to a child yes.

We would never have an opportunity to socialise together as no childcare unless it was with other families. We tend to just see our own friends and some of them are parents from school but not the parents of our kids’ friends if that makes sense. You can’t force friendships for your kids based on their parents, but there are a lot of cliques of parents at school who spend a lot of time together outside school and their kids are naturally closer with each - some of it is around activities. Eg football, dance, cheer, that sort of thing.

Not very often, we have different friends (second marriage) and it all feels a bit contrived. When we have chance to go out, we prefer to do it on our own!

No we don't really socialise as a couple. It's actually something I'm very grateful for - I have my friends, he has his friends and we don't get all involved in each others business! The relationships I know where they have the same friends can get a bit awkward imo.
I do always socialise with the mums from school though, but they're nice people I'd be friends with anyway so it's not forced.
You're right - it does make a huge difference when you're friends with the parents. I went to a small school and a few of the parents were very good friends (say out of 6 girls in the class, 4 of their parents were matey) and so they went on holidays and trips and saw each other at weekends, and the other 2 girls were always left out a bit because of it.

This idea of families holidaying together is good. It helps children learn how to react to adults and behave in socially appropriate ways.

Mixing together socially. Is this not how communities are built and develop.
Obviously this has to occur in a natural way but to deliberately resist the multi generational mixing seems isolating and detrimental to development of the children into young adulthood.

I don’t really - but I think it’s because we live where I grew up & DH went to Uni so we both have wide circles of friends from “before times”. Before kids, we’d socialise together more often but now we’ll tend to see our friends separately while the other one stays with the kids so we can save our babysitting credit for date nights etc.