Dispatches from the House Party

T he Atlantic’s Ellen Cushing has a remedy for what ails the lonely American heart: “It’s parties,” she wrote, “and we need more of them.”

“Simply put, America is in a party deficit,” she continued, before citing survey data indicating that the number of Americans who report attending or hosting social events has declined over the last 20 years. Cushing also marshals anecdotal evidence suggesting Americans are desperate for parties but just don’t know where to find them. “Everyone wants to attend parties, but no one wants to throw them. We just expect them to appear when we need them, like fire trucks,” the author added. “My point is that we are obligated to create the social world we want.”

She’s right. My wife and I reached a similar conclusion years ago.

We moved into our first suburban house in 2016 — a 1,900 square-foot single-family home 40 minutes outside New York City — just a few months before the birth of our second child. It was an atomized existence leavened only by the few but lasting friendships we made with the parents of the children who attended our kids’ preschool. Each of us would take turns hosting the other, but we could not reciprocate — not at scale. Our modest starter home reached capacity with the introduction of even one other family of four. Those years were spent sheepishly benefiting from the generosity of our small, local network — a beneficence we resolved to repay, someday.

The onset of the Covid pandemic both lit a fire under our desire to relocate to a property that could accommodate our social proclivities and (along with some book revenue) helped us accrue the cash necessary to make the move. We found the big house with the pool, and getting the party started was the first item on our agenda upon closing.

That is no exaggeration. Less than one week after taking possession of the keys, we welcomed about three dozen families and their children to our homes for our kids’ joint birthday party (combining two September birthdays into one maximally efficient event). Some traveled to us from our old neighborhood, but we were surrounded by many new faces. On that front, my wife deserves all the credit. She spent the month prior to the move introducing herself and her kids around their new school — creating, as Cushing recommended, “the social world we want.”

We went overboard in the months and years that followed. Not only did we owe our friends reciprocity, our families, too, had assumed too much of the burden around the holidays. So, we took Thanksgiving and Christmas off their hands. The following April, we welcomed my wife’s mother and her friends to celebrate her 70th birthday — between 70 and 80 people in attendance. That summer, we inaugurated what became an annual neighborhood Memorial Day gathering, with about 50 attendees. The kids’ birthday party celebration somehow took on a more adult-oriented character and went on well beyond the point at which children should be present. A legacy Halloween party for which our home’s previous owners were famous was soon revived, and, along with the extended family gatherings during the holidays, the last four months of the year soon became glutted with large social gatherings.

We never regretted the cost of these events, which were scalable depending on our level of commitment. The price tag is not trivial, particularly if you make a habit of hosting. But it’s also a worthwhile investment in community development and personal gratification. And although the effort required to prepare for and clean up after an engagement is hardly negligible, it’s worth it. The neighborhood in which we were fortunate enough to find ourselves was already a tightly knit community when we arrived on the scene, but we like to think our soirées helped cement those casual bonds into something deeper. In a sense, we were lucky the fates provided us with a lovely collection of people in our age cohort whose company we enjoyed. But that luck was also a byproduct of industry.

What we managed to help recreate is the nostalgic neighborhood ideal, the loss of which Cushing mourns. “I remember houses and yards full of people, music all the way up, lots of food and of course free flowing alcohol,” read one sorrowful social-media post the author cited. That was the world we wanted: a free-range community populated by genuine friends through which our children could perambulate unaccompanied by adults. Halloween, in particular, pings that sense of reminiscent sentimentality the average Millennial encounters when watching a movie from the analog age.

Cushing concludes with a call to action, which is the only part of her essay with a questionable premise. “Resolve to throw two parties — two because two feels manageable, and chain-letter math dictates that if every party has at least 10 guests (anything less is not a party!) and everyone observes host-guest reciprocity (anything else is sociopathic!),” she concludes, “then everyone gets 20 party invitations a year — possibly many more.”

I can say with experience that this is the trap into which those who feel themselves bereft of parties fall. The prospect of receiving invitations to 20 or more large social gatherings per year would quickly feel less like a treat than a burdensome obligation for guests and hosts alike — particularly in the winter months, in which events retreat indoors. And planning large events with the implicit expectation of reciprocity from your guests is a recipe for bitter disappointment. Not everyone has the space, wherewithal, or interest in creating that kind of environment, but their company is no less valuable. And the enrichment your guests derive from your hospitality is not theirs alone. The parties beget friendships, which take on a momentum all their own: dinner parties out, impromptu driveway confabs, garage nights, outings with the kids, and so on. The reward for hosting parties is not more parties; it’s intimacy.

Even if Cushing’s expectancy is a little presumptuous, she’s correct to note that the life-affirming tableau of the party — a space that has neither time nor attention to devote to screens — is a feast for the senses. To such an extent, in fact, that the psychological rewards we derive from such a setting may be an evolutionary adaptation. We are social animals, after all.