Some of today’s most notable barflies are still in day care.
Spend an afternoon in hipster-filled Brooklyn, and you can’t help but see this for yourself: Dads with infants strapped to their bodies, sipping pints at brewery and bar Threes Brewing, moms jiggling strollers while enjoying drinks outside of biergarten Der Schwarze Kölner.
The issue has become so prevalent that some bars have issued rules about bringing your kids. Brooklyn bar Mission Dolores states that parents are not allowed to bring their kids into the bar after 6 p.m. and nearby bar Greenwood Park now puts a 7 p.m. curfew on kids.
It’s a scene that’s far from limited to Brooklyn — you’ll find kids in bars in cities across the nation — and one that has angered plenty of people. “Hey bad parents…quit bringing your kids to bars,” one Chicago-area woman laments on Yelp. Or as Dave Infante, writing for Thrillist crudely puts it: “don’t bring your [expletive] baby to the bar…it’s unacceptable under any circumstance.” (Some might say the same about his language.)
But some experts say that, in some cases, it’s OK to bring the little ones to the bar, assuming, of course, that you act as a responsible, sober parent and can see that other patrons are also behaving responsibly.
It’s typically appropriate to bring the kids to a bar when the bar itself encourages that, with kids menus or kid-friendly events. For example, Simmzy’s, a Los Angeles pub, has a menu with nibbles for the little ones, and beer hall Der Schwarze Kölner in Brooklyn hosts bi-weekly playgroups and other kid-friendly events that are clearly advertised as such on its “Babies & Bier” Facebook page.
Most of the time, of course, it isn’t clear whether kids are welcome. Abbie Schiller, the CEO of children’s media company The Mother Company, says as a rough rule of thumb, it can be OK to bring them if the bar serves food (and no, bags of chips for drunk patrons don’t count as food in this context; we’re talking a number of menu options). “If you have children who are respectful and the bar is serving food, it doesn’t matter as much,” she explains. But, she adds, you do need to seat your children at a table away from patrons who might be even a little intoxicated.
Consider the bar’s atmosphere as well — if it seems more like a meeting place with food and drinks than a bar where people get drunk, it may be OK, experts say — as well as where you live. “Kids in bars are not the norm in America: No one would think twice about taking the family to a pub in London, or other European countries where drinking alcohol is not as segregated from socializing as it is in America,” says April Masini, a relationship and etiquette expert. “Here, we tend to see drinking as an adult activity that is closely linked to getting drunk and picking up dates.”
Still, you have to understand that there are risks to doing this, even when you do it as responsibly as possible: “The longer term consequence is that you risk normalizing drug use (alcohol, nicotine) before they have the emotional maturity to recognize the risks,” says behavior expert Richard Daniel Curtis, the founder of parenting network Help My Child Grow. “You can also run the risk of exposing them to unsuitable behavior or language, again normalizing it before they have the internal limits to stop themselves from copying it.”
And you have to accept that many people simply will never agree with your decision to bring the little ones to the pub. “No, [it] is not OK to bring your child to a bar, I don’t care if they are asleep in the carriage, or coloring on a bar stool,” says blogger Cherie Corso. “It makes other patrons feel uncomfortable, and puts you and your child in a bad situation where things can happen.”
As Esther Boykin, a Washington, D.C.-based family, marriage and relationship therapist, says: “I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to take your kids to a bar…Not only is it confusing to let your children hang out with you at a bar when they are underage, it’s unfair to the people around you. “