If a couple (or 2 or 3) have to spend $80 each for a babysitter to come to my house for dinner, I feel like it has to be ambitious. And then it’s too much. But with little kids dinner parties make no sense.

My take on this as part of a DC millennial couple with a very small child and “local” non-MAGA-work is that professionals are raising small kids later in life and have fewer resources than past generations. We work all the time and unfortunately are not able to put in the time and resource intensive work of building these neighborhoods and social networks. Women at home played a huge and likely undervalued role in creating these social occasions and now we are all at work like men. I think it’s good. Women should be out in the world and working. We are needed there. But there’s no one doing the free but actually costly work of fluffing a dinner party and maintaining social networks. We are late thirties/early forties with babies and 80 work weeks and $30k early Childhood tuition bills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

My family still has dinner parties. Easier to deal with the kids that way. They just go up to bed and leave the grownups to talk.

OP isn’t interested in regular families and their ordinary dinner parties. Also apparently not interested in the wealthy crowd dinner parties that are likely still taking place in the humongous luxury homes scattered all over DMV with huge private yards and pools. The latter crowd outsources catering and cleaning and invites a lot of people, because it’s not a hardship for them to host. But OP is looking for the influential intelligentsia gatherings in urban parts close to the pulse of political decisions.

Don’t want to ID them, but a couple of female journalists host regular “newsmaker” interviews. Very like Sally Q but without the pretension!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

This is my exact experience also. My parents were great hosts. They had fun parties with jazz music and martinis, summer barbecues. We always had people at our dinner table. As kids we went to a ton of grown-up parties. They were routine!

I used to have dinner parties when my kids were small, but I agree that people don’t like them. People don’t want to be in other homes. Restaurants are more neutral and take less social skills.

Do people really not want to be in other people’s homes for a party? Why?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

Dinners parties for this gen-Xer died in the 1990s. Work life was so much nicer than...company softball games, company Christmas parties, company summer BBQs where you had relay races, like potato sack...sigh. I just retired and feel sorry for my kids who will never know this.

This and the post about "dinner at the boss's house" make me sadly nostalgic. Boomer here and bosses were Boomer or Silent when we came to DC mid 80s. Sherry parties at Alice Rivlin's and such. Holiday parties on and offsite. Picnics.

Nowadays (to be old fashioned) there are threads bitterly complaining about having to go to company things like family-included BBQs "on your own time." What a bunch of ungrateful whiners who just don't get it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

This is my exact experience also. My parents were great hosts. They had fun parties with jazz music and martinis, summer barbecues. We always had people at our dinner table. As kids we went to a ton of grown-up parties. They were routine!

I used to have dinner parties when my kids were small, but I agree that people don’t like them. People don’t want to be in other homes. Restaurants are more neutral and take less social skills.

+1 The response to covid killed this. We had lots of big parties and smaller dinner parties until virtue signaling by isolating became an art form. DC has always been a few steps below WRT social skills and now this awkward populace is more than happy to lean into declining social skills.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

So this. People are such inconsiderate guests now.

But I have to say the restaurant prices might be steering people back to homes again. But maybe more drinks only. Accommodating everyone’s dietary wishes has become difficult for a sit down dinner.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

This is my exact experience also. My parents were great hosts. They had fun parties with jazz music and martinis, summer barbecues. We always had people at our dinner table. As kids we went to a ton of grown-up parties. They were routine!

I used to have dinner parties when my kids were small, but I agree that people don’t like them. People don’t want to be in other homes. Restaurants are more neutral and take less social skills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn't exist anymore for the most part aside from Kalorama and Juleanna Glover's house. But not sure she is even into that anymore.

We are a divided city and country. People don't have manners or civility anymore. The Republican VP of our age spends his evenings s***posting on twitter, not at cocktail parties with Democrats and WP reporters.

Juleanna Glover is 15/20 years ago. She was never really part of that set but tried to ingratiate herself and make herself something. The real set doesn’t seek attention or self-promote.
We lived in Kalorama until recently, and there’s a very active social life with really interesting dinner parties, discussions, dinner celebrating book releases, etc. There are also lots of interesting events tying into various diplomats who live in the neighborhood.
If you’re looking more for the self-promoting, instagram set, there’s a lot more of that in Wesley Heights, Kent and Foxhall.

I hope to god this person isn’t important or interesting because that would be so depressing.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

My boomer mother still does this but she hires a caterer. Definitely the way to go.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if dinner parties died.

They are dead for Gen Xers in the lower reaches of the Upper Middle Class. Everyone meets at restaurants.

When I was a kid, my parents socialized like the old sitcoms - inviting the boss over, having work people and kids over for parties. My generation doesn't do any of that.

I tried once and gave up. I was hosting 3 couples. One cancelled same day. Another, the wife was pregnant and didn't tell me so she couldn't eat most of the expensive food. They left early. The third left because the 2nd couple left early.

After that, I only did restaurant meals.

I haven't been invited to a boss or manager's house for an event/evening since around 1995. The hosts were Silent Generation and Boomers. To the manner born.

Dinners parties for this gen-Xer died in the 1990s. Work life was so much nicer than...company softball games, company Christmas parties, company summer BBQs where you had relay races, like potato sack...sigh. I just retired and feel sorry for my kids who will never know this.

Anonymous wrote:It doesn't exist anymore for the most part aside from Kalorama and Juleanna Glover's house. But not sure she is even into that anymore.

We are a divided city and country. People don't have manners or civility anymore. The Republican VP of our age spends his evenings s***posting on twitter, not at cocktail parties with Democrats and WP reporters.

Juleanna Glover is 15/20 years ago. She was never really part of that set but tried to ingratiate herself and make herself something. The real set doesn’t seek attention or self-promote.
We lived in Kalorama until recently, and there’s a very active social life with really interesting dinner parties, discussions, dinner celebrating book releases, etc. There are also lots of interesting events tying into various diplomats who live in the neighborhood.
If you’re looking more for the self-promoting, instagram set, there’s a lot more of that in Wesley Heights, Kent and Foxhall.

This is happening but not in one specific neighborhood. I go to these all the time. Current version is more salon style, less sit-down dinner. Stuff like 20 people, drinks and heavy appetizers, and someone does a talk with Q&A in a living room. Sit down dinners tend to be at homes with staff, including embassy officials.

Anonymous wrote:There are still loads of these people in Chevy Chase (MD and DC) but most of them are now over 60. The younger generations haven't really clustered geographically in the same way.

Well, I mean, we've had a tougher real estate market to contend with.