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Back in 1969, if there was a "playdate" it had something to do with the Playboy magazine on the top shelf of my dad's bedroom closet. Dad, you didn't know I knew, but I did.
When I was a kid, we just went out and played. I am now a successful adult. Not sure we really needed to reinvent the wheel here.
NYC definitely has playdates and helicopter parents. The author of the Free Range Kids book (and blog) lives in NYC (Manhattan, I think) and it was her experiences there that led her to write the article, and eventually book, about some of these larger issues.
And there's nothing wrong with play dates in themselves, especially for kids who don't live in the same neighborhood; the bigger issue here is that more and more kids are ONLY getting to interact with other kids through these formalized encounters. No more running around the neighborhood hanging out with whoever is also playing outside.
(As far as food allergies go, I've read about that, too. It doesn't mean that food allergies don't exist, or that they're necessarily caused by oversanitization (obviously there were people who had severe, life-threatening allergies before there were sanitization hand gels and the like), but rather that overall numbers may be rising due in part to these trends.)