What's more, there's no escape. All the children have them and therefore the scene on recurring weekends is the same, with the same group of parental hangers-on willing the time away at soft play centres, football pitches, lazer quest, trampoline parks and, worst of all, at community centres with happy-pill-filled children's entertainers.
Never is the emotional experience of child and parent more different than at a birthday party. For the child, this is the pinnacle of weekend entertainment, a heady cocktail of prescribed fun, sugary food, loud music and party bags. For the parents, it's two hours of pretending you're answering work emails on your phone and forcibly smiling as a 20-something youth in an ill-fitting Spiderman costume tells the children to shout louder.
Then there's the politics of the party food. Just as the children are at their sweatiest they're summonsed to the table and presented with an insane amount of food. There's usually enough sandwiches to feed the lunch crowd at M&S Covent Garden, as well as assorted dishes of sausages, crisps, biscuits, cakes and the well intentioned mum's bowls of carrot sticks and cucumber.
Ignoring everything that isn't covered in either icing or sugar, the children pile their plates high while the parents help with opening bags of crisps or sticking straws in cartons of drink. What happens next is unspoken, but universal. Every parent in that room is thinking the same thing; there's no way on God's earth that these children are going to eat all that food. I want it, but can I be the one to dive in? No one else is, everyone is holding back. Surely someone will take one of the 4,000 ham sandwiches remaining on that plate? It's lunch time, I'm starving and I haven't even been offered a chocolate finger! I'm going to do it. That sausage roll has my name on it. There's half a bowl of Frazzles over there begging to be eaten. Sod it, stuff you lot and your 'I'm too good for this children's food' conservatism, I'm doing this for the hungry fathers out there. Oh, no, hang on, it's too late, Mum and Gran are tidying it away. Damn you unspoken children's party etiquette!
As for party bags. with the obligatory slice of cake and kilo of Haribo, great idea. That's just the battle I need in the back of the car on the way home. Not for me a serene journey with exhausted child napping in the rear seat, I'd much prefer a 20 minute shouting match in which I'm repeatedly told I'm the worst Dad in the world.
Same time next week everyone?
