I have a pile of laundry to do, yet I've ignored it in favour of reading this thread. I am trying to see this from the OP's point of view and can only come up with this analogy:
You hold a dinner party for friends. You make a big effort. Cook everything from scratch, decorate the table beautifully, spend a bomb on wine etc. You do this because you want to be a good host and to give your friends a nice evening.
In return, you get invited to their house but instead of lovely home cooked meal, you get a family bucket from KFC, a few beers and you sit in the family room surrounded by toys that haven't been picked up. What's more, instead of being invited to three different dinner parties, you're only invited to the one and all three other couples and chipped in on the KFC bucket.
You feel put out because you've made a lot of effort to give your friends a nice evening and you'd like it if they could return the favour. This makes you want to not bother the next time.
So on that level I can sort of see where you might be coming from. But it's not really the same thing. Kids parties are kids parties. They are NOT worth getting stressed out about.
And even in the grown up dinner party scenario, you've got to ask yourself: what was the real reason you threw such a nice dinner party? Were you trying to impress? Were you hoping that they'd all secretly leave and love you more for being a domestic goddess? Were you assuming that by throwing a brilliant dinner party you'd be setting the bar and you'd be 'paid back' with many similar parties? or Were you genuinely trying to give people a nice time because you get enjoyment out of other people's enjoyment?
Hopefully it's the latter.