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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To be clear: not my family!

So where I grew up, most people were from the area and had tons of adult siblings, parents, cousins, etc nearby. But it was extremely rare to see someone bring, say, their sister and all of their nieces and nephews to the country club or swim club for the afternoon. Even families that were multi-generation members of private clubs would just say a quick hi to each other at the tennis courts or the weekend buffet because the grandparents had their friends to socialize and the adult kids were taking the grandchildren off to see their own friends.

Lately, I’ve repeatedly had weird experiences of showing up at my swim club or country club (the two memberships is a long irrelevant waitlist saga) and feeling like I know no one. Both are small clubs and this has never been the case in past years. And then after overhearing conversations I realize that it’s because there are two members hosting 20+ guests- their parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, etc. They were definitely local because they were discussing nearby schools, neighborhoods, etc., so it’s not like everyone had flown in from the middle of nowhere for a once-in-a-lifetime gathering.

It felt weird and uncomfortable to be some of the only “outsiders”, especially when they basically took over various parts of the pool for their contests, games, etc. Usually my kids have no qualms about joining groups of random kids they only sort of knew, but for this one they announced they wanted to leave early.

One of my clubs is proposing a policy at the board level specifically to restrict this kind of hosting/entertaining/family reunion stuff because “the club should be a place for socializing between members, not a rental facility.” I agree with that but I see it constantly and kind of have my doubts that it will be effective.

Are you seeing this kind of clannish family socializing in any of the places you go? I see it at my kids’ sports events, school events, etc. Maybe I grew up in a reserved area, but we did our big family socializing at each others’ homes and it was considered kind of weird to run around together for every other thing. [/quote]

I noticed that too, once I was invited to an indoor playground for my kid and tried to be friendly with the host. She was really nice and friendly but her mother was standing right next to her almost monitoring our conversation. [/quote]

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