Birthday parties - home or away?

[fredtbad]

We have had two at home aged 1yr & 2 yr. Both fantastic fun. Noone else we know with kids the same age has parties, those with older kids hire somewhere.
When we were kids all parties were in the child's home, has it changed so much and I wonder why?

Yes, I always went to parties at people's houses as a child. In our case when dd was 2 we wanted to do a party but we're in a flat and in an awkward area of London for most people I know to get to with kids at a reasonable hour. So we hired somewhere in the centre. It worked out great as there was tons of space, lots of different things to do and no major clearing up for us!

Weirdly I can only remember a few parties at people's houses (and they were the kids who lived on farms and had summer b'days). Possibly beacuse there were only 16 in a class it was too many for the average house to cope with, but too few for parents not to worry about "excluding" some kids?