How a Vancouver mother kept her social life alive after having a child

McLachlan begins with her cousin Beth, who has a 10-year-old daughter, Birdie. McLachlan describes Birdie as possibly the most interesting girl in the world: she does karate, gardens and makes stop-motion films.

Even so, McLachlan says Beth, despite clearly loving her daughter and having a close bond with her, experienced a fair amount of social isolation as a mother. In McLachlan's words, quoting Beth, the years had been "the loneliest decade of my life."

McLachlan notes that Beth is not alone. She cites a study by Action for Children of 2,000 people, which found that 68% of parents felt isolated from their friends after having children. She works out that this is more than half, nearly 75%, and calls it a lot.

She adds that another 40% felt unsupported in their parenting. A separate UK study, she says, found that half of mothers under 30 often or always felt lonely. McLachlan says she was frightened of this isolation when she became pregnant four years ago, at a young age.

McLachlan says what worried her was not only Beth's warning or the statistics, but having watched many of her friends disappear into parenthood during her own childless years. She says the problem is not simply jealousy of the attention babies receive, though that is a small part of it.

The main issue, she explains, is that when one person has kids and the other does not, they fall out of sync. They can no longer do the same things together, such as taking a baby to a pottery class, an improv class or out for drinks with friends. When parents do go out, they are often stressed, or they later find online criticism of parents who bring children into restaurants, which she describes with a joke about "gremlins" from Reddit.

She concludes that it is easy for parents to withdraw from their usual activities and environments, even after the hardest newborn days pass. Losing these friendships, she says, is not just uncomfortable but unhealthy.

McLachlan cites an 80-year Harvard study which found that the biggest predictor of success, longevity and happiness is not wealth, status or how many abs a person has, but relationships. What matters, she says, is not how popular people are but how many close relationships they have, how many people care about them, stay in touch and are interested in their lives.

She presents this as a problem that affects everyone, not only parents. Whether or not people have children, she says, the issue is theirs to address.

McLachlan describes parenting and loneliness as an epidemic that affects everyone. Close relationships with close adults, she argues, act as the social glue that holds everything together. They are how care is shared, how information travels and how people are kept from falling through the gaps.

She says that when parents are quietly pushed out of social spaces, the social fabric that holds everything together is damaged, and she calls this extremely important.

McLachlan says that when she became pregnant she was not thinking about this bigger picture. She worried about how much coffee she could drink without giving her son extra arms, and whether she could still do the things she loved. She did not want to be limited to mom-only activities, although she admits she is an incredible singer of "The Wheels on the Bus." Then she asked herself whether she really had to choose, since she had always viewed motherhood as a social effort.

She grew up in the 1980s with a good deal of freedom, in a complex of houses with a large communal courtyard and a playground. Children ran around in what she describes as a wild pack of small beasts fed on Capri Sun. An adult usually watched from a balcony above, but parents were mostly down in the courtyard with them, making each other margaritas, sharing gossip and taking turns telling the kids to stop playing Power Rangers in the garden. She calls it a community experience.

McLachlan says the courtyard was an important third space. Sociologists, she explains, use this term for a gathering place that is neither home nor work. In her courtyard, multigenerational fun happened, and parents could enjoy being parents while also enjoying adult pleasures: a responsible number of margaritas, a cold drink, an inappropriate joke, compassion and community.

McLachlan says she believed, perhaps naively, that it was still possible to keep that kind of community, keep friendships, be a mother, and not abandon the friends she had before entering this stage of life. She did not want the loneliest decade of her life, and she did not want to choose between activities with her child and activities as a mother.

She acknowledges that this is difficult in cities. There is not always a big communal courtyard waiting for you, or a safe dead-end street where everyone can gather. Living in Vancouver, she realized she would have to create that experience herself, on purpose.

McLachlan says she went back in time to four years ago, when her daughter Coco was born. She did not limit outings to mom-and-baby singing classes, though she says she does well at them. Instead she took Coco along to all of her adult social activities, whether or not others welcomed it. Examples she gives include a modern wine bar, trivia nights and a wrestling show. Coco wears headphones and behaves responsibly.

McLachlan says she simply refused to be left out, and that Coco is her plus-one for everything. This works fairly well while the child is portable and attached to her, she notes, but becomes more awkward once Coco starts crawling, then walking, running and climbing.

McLachlan describes trying to have a happy-hour drink with a friend at a sports bar. Instead she found herself running away from a delicious IPA and gossip, trying to keep Coco from falling off a stool, stealing fries from another table, hitting her head or going behind the bar.

She says she worked hard to bring her parent identity into the adult identity she had left behind, but spent most of the happy hour apologizing to the bartender because her 18-month-old had tried to open the keg. It was on the fifth rescue mission, she says, that she realized it was not inappropriate to bring her daughter there.

McLachlan says what the city really needs is a bar designed for babies. She notes that this is not an outlandish idea elsewhere. In the UK, children may run around the local pub. In Australia, many restaurants and breweries have impressive play areas for kids, similar to McDonald's PlayPlace. She says she has envied friends who visited Spain and sent her photos of civilized espresso served in a bar inside a playground, and asks why Vancouver does not have this.

She clarifies that adults do not need to drink to have fun, and that anyone looking after a child obviously has to be responsible with alcohol. Her core point is that multigenerational social spaces matter because they are more vibrant, more human and more alive.

McLachlan argues that when social activities are segregated by age, and people reject the "gremlins" of parenthood, everyone feels lonelier whether or not they have children. She asks whether friends without kids miss their friends who have them, and whether they want them to come out too.

Still trying to keep Coco from juggling the bar's supplies, she says, she imagined an ideal bar in Vancouver where her daughter and adult friends could have a good time together in a shared space.

McLachlan describes the bar she has in mind as designed with soft, rounded corners, not many places to get fingers pinched and no wobbly stools. She suggests some form of containment, which she jokingly says she does not want to call a cage, but which she describes as gates. Toys and craft beer on tap would be available, and the most important feature would be implicit permission for children to run free while adults finish their conversations.

She jokes that the bar might be called "Toddlerz" with a Z, though she is still refining the idea. She is a magazine editor, not a restaurant owner, and says she cannot afford to open her own place now, but she can send an email.

McLachlan found a bright, spacious cocktail tasting room that is fun for the whole family, with lots of low, rounded Scandinavian-style furniture. She emailed the owner, who replied the same day saying she had a two-year-old and that the idea sounded amazing. McLachlan describes this as a nice moment, a fellow soldier in the trenches.

"Toddlerz" did not work well as an unofficial name, so McLachlan renamed the event "Witching Hour." She explains that parents use this phrase for the emotional stretch between nap and dinner, when children are, in her scientific-sounding term, maniacs: emotional, irrational and unstable. The event sold out in a day.

She says the sign-ups were not just pity purchases from friends. Strangers wanted to come for a drink with her and her baby, which meant she had to deliver. She bought a slide on Facebook Marketplace, packed a bag of toys and turned the cocktail lounge into what she calls a poor person's playground. Sixty new little friends were expected.

One early arrival was Alison, whom McLachlan did not know. She came through the door holding two children's hands, having taken three buses from the suburbs on a 90-minute trip with two kids, which McLachlan notes many would consider a nightmare. Alison thought it was worth it because she wanted to be around people who understand, as she put it. The room was full that day, with children enjoying a night out, fish crackers flying and at least one person taking off a shirt. McLachlan says nobody panicked; everyone was relaxed, and parents were given permission to be themselves.

McLachlan says it is almost embarrassing to think about what she did, since she only sent an email and brought a bag, and she is not there to show off. She says there is a hunger for third spaces that are multigenerational in the city, where children and adults can connect and be themselves together.

Cities have restaurants, pubs, cafés and art studios, where adult social life happens, but many of them are simply not accessible for parents of young children. Opportunities fade because these places are not always made for families, implicitly or explicitly. Parents can do as she does and fit in, for example taking a baby to a stadium and changing them on the bathroom floor to the delight of fans. But most of the time, she says, navigating adult spaces while holding a small child's hand is exhausting. Physical spaces are not always welcoming, and behavioral expectations can be tiring to manage. Without the resources for childcare to keep their usual social pace, staying home is simply easier, or parents spend all their social hours at kids' baseball or karate.

She says parental loneliness is only part of a larger epidemic that everyone knows well, but that it can be solved.

McLachlan says her suggestions are practical. Businesses could hold a family-friendly night once a month. Parents could write to their favorite bar and ask whether they can bring a couple of dozen of their young children, and she promises other parents would come, with Alison certainly among them. Designers and urban planners could create spaces in the city that invite multigenerational interaction. Everyone else should remember the children in their lives and the people who raise them, who deserve a night out, perhaps even a drink, as much as anyone.

She says she does not want a bar for babies because children need to appreciate a good pilsner. She wants it because she remembers a time when children simply were there and did not ruin anyone's fun, and when adults talked above them, looked after each other and did not disappear from each other's social lives just because a baby arrived. The housing complex where she grew up, she says, was a vital part of her happy childhood, and that third space was key to their good times. For her parents, it was an important part of their parenting too, making it a cheerful, community-based and connected experience that fostered friendships her parents still keep today.

Everything Witching Hour does, she concludes, asks what would happen if we brought that feeling back to our communities. What if, instead of losing people to parenting, we made room at the table for them and their small companions, or perhaps at the bar.