The Death of Partying in the USA

In my younger days I threw 100 person parties in a San Francisco apartment - it's standing room only for sure, but so is going to a crowded bar. And I've cooked for 15 without a dining table - you eat on the floor wherever you can find space.

Now I don't disagree with your point; I'm not 22 anymore and live in the burbs and have a less full social calendar, largely due to the logistical overhead of finding my way into the city or getting friends from the city out here. But I do want to say you can have a lot of fun with a lot of friends in a small space with the right attitude :)

> Normal people are renting apartments or portions of homes.

About 2/3 of households in the US own the home they live in. Renting is the minority, not the majority.

My sister and her husband throw a pretty great annual Halloween party at the house they rent which is 1-2 hours from the nearest city and a good 15-20 minutes from the nearest town.

I don't think the real estate situation helps but I think there's a deeper social problem driving both of those effects.

It's not going to get any better, either, as states let corporations buy up entire neighborhoods. When you combine that scourge with HOAs, you have the end of home ownership in the USA.

>People these days don’t own real estate. Wealthy people own it all.

The article says a similar decline is seen among the wealthy.

more importantly imo: maids and housewives.

good riddance btw. but we need to adjust because partying is nice. we are still working ad if we have a free employee taking care of half our lives.

welp, it's always a class issue.

Often the kids like to play together, but the parents are the ones that are just... weird and asocial. I hate to bring agism into this, but there definitely seems to be a generational gap with the adults.

Some of my kid's friends are raised by their parents, and others are (apparently) raised primarily by grandparents.

When my kid wants to get together with friends whose (50-60 year old) grandparents bring them by, the grandparents come up to the door, socialize for a bit while the kid runs inside, and then we talk about when the playtime will be over and they can come over to pick the kid up. If it's an event where we both bring the kids, I find it easy to shoot the breeze with the grandparents, have small talk about how the week went, and so on.

When the parents are, say, 25-35 year old range, it's a totally different vibe. They'll drive up, let the kid out of the car, and then race away without even getting out of their car. When playtime is at a local park or something, they sometimes hang around, but they go off into a corner, engrossed on their phone, totally ignoring the other parents (who, depending on their own ages are either chit chatting or locked into their Instagram).

I remember when I was a kid in the 80s, and not only would we love to get together at someone's house, but the parents would also be happy to get together for a little socialization, maybe throw some steaks on the grill, put on some Sportsball, or whatever. This practice seems to be dead now that I'm a parent!

One factor may have to do with birth rates and construction. I grew up in a neighborhood that was all built up within the span of a few years, and populated by young families, in the early 60s. There were kids all over the place. Anybody who wanted to play would just go out and holler, and they'd have a few other kids almost instantly.

Where my wife and I raised our kids, there was one neighbor with kids, and that's it.

Also, kids are more occupied now. "Back in my day" elementary school kids didn't have homework, and it was pretty minimal even through high school. My kids had homework starting in first grade. Naturally you want it to get done early while the kids are still awake, but this cuts into the prime hours for play. We should simply have revolted against it. But that's hindsight.

>I give my kids business cards with my phone number to pass out to their friends to give to their parents

Yeah if i was a kid i'd be mortified at having to do this.

What happened is that everything turned into playdates? When we were kids, the general direction was GTFO, and don't be late for dinner. Who did you go play with? Whoever was at the park. When you got older, you hopefully had access to the skating rink. Or maybe a bowling alley. Before that, kickball at the park. Pretty much every day. Maybe see if you can over shoot the swing again.

I wonder how much of this comes down to wage stagnation and the need for not only both parents to work, but to work more hours and sometimes multiple jobs, just to keep from drowning. Especially when childcare is so expensive, it's a situation that can compound and spiral.

Parents just want to watch their Internet content and it's easier to just stick their kids in front of a video game or computer vs having an event that requires parenting.

At least when parents are addicted to alcohol they can still be social and function as parents. Not so with Instagram/tiktok.

Parties and kids aren't mutually exclusive. In fact some of my best memories growing up were from the times my parents took me to some house party where all the parents were talking and drinking and having their own adult fun, while us kids were running wild over the property and neighborhood until real late. Adults are excited, kids are excited, it just works, see you next weekend.

Kids used to just go outside, find one another, and play. I see that you are attempting to solve the problem with organizing playdates. However, I think that playdates and structured EVERYTHING for kids is a contributing factor to how we got here.

I think at some point, we need to acknowledge media sensationalism (traditional and social media varieties) have not only poisoned politics and bolstered conspiracy theory popularity, but have vastly overstated the dangers of every day life, making childhood and parenting much worse than a generation or two ago.

The sprawl of suburbia isn't so much outside the top 5-10ish cities. Even "growing" places like Columbus OH in the midwest, you can go from cornfield to cornfield across the built environment in probably 25 miles and about as many minutes on the freeway network that is entirely uncongested since it is so overbuilt for the population (unlike in those top 5 places where it may be underbuilt). By and large that is how the bulk of the country looks and operates. The idea that you'd drive an hour and still be in the same metro region is this big exception that people living in that exception assume must be the norm, but really isn't.

It’s car dependence, but the impacts were delayed because people used to just drink and drive. Now that’s rightfully seen as unacceptable, but we are still left with car dependence. So people just don’t leave home now.

> Most Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it's to complain or they want something transactionally.

My family moved into a small cul-de-sac with 5 houses total. I wanted to introduce myself, so I wrote a short letter with a little about ourselves and our contact info, and then dropped it into each neighbors mailbox. Only 1 neighbor wrote back, and 1 neighbor literally _returned the letter_ to our mailbox. So yea, that's the neighborhood I live in.

My Southern California neighborhood used to be like this. It was a diverse neighborhood of white, Filipino, Viet and Mexicans and it felt alive. Then covid hit and the demographics changed. Prices went up. Now the neighborhood is as quiet at night as where I lived in the bay area a few years ago. No open garages. No music.

People are generally unfriendly now and keep to themselves more. Sad what we've lost. We're still an immigrant community but the immigrants are from different places. I'm sure they paid too much for their houses and feel the stress. There are also some obvious cultural differences with respect to socializing and partying.

> Americans these days won't interact with their neighbors unless it's to complain or they want something transactionally.

It certainly depends. I had great neighbors when I lived on the river in a non-HOA community... many parties were had with sunset beer hangouts on the dock or beach. Military communities are also notably close-knit so what you say makes sense.

You got this immigrant. We have a group of a few families. Each hosts at least one large event per year on occasions like Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years and our own festivals. Everyone and their kids, and other friends / relatives join. Three families ended up on the same street by chance. We regularly cook or get takeout and get together at short notice. Alcohol and food play a big role.

That said, being an immigrant poses other kinds of challenges. So it's not all like the 1970s in the US, or where we came from.

That’s it - immigrant communities are wonderful in this regard, as are communities with lots of old people (maybe because they’re from a different time, maybe because they’re lonely, who knows).

I bet that if the head of the local Air Force wives' club did exactly that today, they'd get the same results.

I am going to assume your grandmother probably didn’t work, and instead took made her and her husband’s social life her full time job.

It’s much easier to entertain constantly when one half of the relationship has the availability to do it.

If I’m mistaken, then holy heck how did your grandparents do it lmao.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. This is an accurate characterization of my entire adult life. My wife and I are looking at buying a house, and we've concluded that we can't despite living in Wisconsin and making far, far more than the median income around here. There's no end in sight.

Our social structure isn't built around neighbors. I could name 2 people I've shared an apartment building with in the last 5 years. Incidentally, they were a couple in the same 3-flat as me, who were there for my entire time in that building. I think the lower density and shared spaces (in that case, a garage) made the difference.

I kind of see this among different friend groups. I have a number of friends out in the midwest where a mortgage might be 180k. They are most all buying homes. These places have garages, basements, front and back yards. And they are throwing parties with their space.

Bit different for those in the high cost of living area. Hanging out is usually a pregame to go to bars because you can't fit very many people in the apartment. Not to say it doesn't happen just you can't exactly throw a party and have a big table of food and a bbq going and cornhole and beer pong and three available bathrooms all at the same time like you can out in the flyover states. At least not without dropping literally 10x as much on what would be a smaller property anyhow with no basement and not much of a lot.

In many ways it seems like the old life of yesteryear these sorts of articles bemoan is still in fact the current year in many places if the housing prices support it. And there are many places that fly under the radar that aren't in those top 5 major metro regions.

nah, we partied plenty when we rented and not knowing someone for long is not a reason not to hang out. What has been eroded is the habit of hanging out because there's no easily accessible third spaces. I'll give you an example: when I lived in Spain I would just walk in the corner bar for a quick beer or a coffee or something to eat, I would very likely run into a neighbor and would chat. The chat would lead to "hey let's do something". In the USA it's almost always the case that people need to make plan, the lack of spontaneity kills most plans.

Yeah. My cat sleeps next to me, sits in my lap while I work, and follows me around the house. That’s a lot of hours every day.

[flagged]

Off the cuff that coincides pretty well with the rise of “helicopter parenting” and “tiger mom” trends.

> Recreational drugs cause unbelievable havok within communities where they are unleashed.

Like.. Stable adults indulging in pot or mushrooms? IME has quite the opposite effect. Addictive drugs which devastate communities are usually not referred to as "recreational".

You're spot on about the outdated threat model and people not fully grasping how damaging social media/internet addiction is.

It's also the opposite. People are exposed to the most extreme, unhinged, and horrifying aspects of humanity on a continuous basis through every form of media and connectivity. It shapes your unconscious risk/reward expectations around forming connections. Someone invites you over to their house for dinner? You just saw a YouTube video about a woman who mixes her urine into her cooking and feeds it to unsuspecting guests to heal what ails them. Almost every form of engaging with the world these days -- except genuinely connecting with others -- makes genuinely connecting with others feel riskier than it is.