I've never really been a huge one for playdates. I did a few when my children were 2 then 3 years old, then stopped. I never really thought about why - I suppose I put it down to being disorganised. I tended to suggested lunches instead when the children were at school.
But now my children are 5 and 6 years old, I've started doing the odd playdate with friends with children the same age - partly to have 'time off' from playing with my child during weekends/holidays, but mostly to catch up with old friends whilst our children play. Visions of my mother, when I had playdates, banning us from the sitting room and telling us to go play upstairs as she and a girlfriend would drink tea or wine, gossip and laugh for what seemed like hours whilst we happily entertained ourselves without them meant I'd really look forward to each playdate. The sort of proper girly time I rarely get now I'm rarely out past 7pm...
But I keep finishing playdates feeling disappointed. I've noticed that, whether the playdate's at mine or theirs, the mothers tend to prioritise their children above, well, me! The most recent one - at which I brought lunch to a girlfriends, we ate it with the children then they went off to play - started so well. But when, 5 minutes later, stuck into a juicy conversation, her child returned to say he wanted to play a complicated game he needed our help with and I suggested they just choose one of the other 50 or so toys in the house so we could carry on gossiping - my friend suddenly agreed help, laid the game out on the kitchen table and proceeded to play it for the next hour with her child as we struggled to grasp it, whilst encouraging him to recite his times tables (all the way to 100 - it took forever). She eventually saw how bored both I, and my child, were so I jumped at her idea of a trip to the local library. Again, visions of us sitting and chatting as our children leafed through the pictures of books (mine doesn't read very well but he'll happily sit for half an hour flicking). But no, she started reading her son a long story and that was that, no chatting.
This is just one example. On hindsight, all my playdates with anlgo-saxon mums have been like this (the French are the total opposite: they crack open a bottle of wine at lunch and don't notice their children unless there's been a serious emergency). And, on hindsight, the reason I stopped doing toddler playdates was for the same reason. But, whereas toddlers need help going to the loo, eating, being supervised, etc, older children don't.
So here's my question: has playdate etiquette changed since the last generation? Is it now no longer acceptable to ignore children during playdates? And, if playdates are now all about focusing not just on your, but other people's, children - which just feels like even harder work to me - what's the advantage to mothers of having them at all?