Our kids are old enough now that we very occasionally arrange sleepovers for them and go out with other friends, but honestly, it's generally not worth it, because we don't have couple friends that are more fun to hang out with in that kind of setting. The friends we do have we like to host at home. Some of them have kids, some don't, but these are not the "night on the town" kind of friends, and hanging out at home with food/wine works out just as well, and we don't have to go anywhere.

Anonymous wrote:I would say at least once a month, if not more, we will get together with other couples without the kids. It happens a lot more now that the kids are older and we can get really cost effective teenage babysitters. When they were babies and toddlers, we rarely did this because we didn't want to spend $20 an hour on a sitter. But now, with $10, we do it more often. It is lovely to have adult conversation!

One of the teachers at my kid's preschool can look after up to 10 school-age kids at once (depending on the mix of ages) and so that's what we do now -- get a bunch of kids watched by one sitter. But when the kids were much younger, we almost never went out. I just saw it as a phase in life, like any other phase.