Remember dating? Remember trying to find one person with whom you wanted to spend your free time? Now we’ve got five people in our family. So when we “date” other families, there are five judgers on our side, three to five on the other side, and all the permutations of relations that come with that many people trying to want to hang around together.

But we do want to spend time with other people. After all, I can find myself spending my days in the bathroom with two bossy 21-month-old females who keep claiming to need to pee pee in the paw-paw but who don't do anything of note when given the chance to flaunt their paw-paw skill sets. While it’s true that people outside my family will probably never kiss me while I’m on the toilet and say “you pee in the potty, Mommy, I so powd of you!” I still yearn for some non-family contact. But having moved frequently, for education and jobs, most of our old friends are scattered across the globe. And people without kids generally like to socialize without the Backyardigans as background music.

My son is three. He is, in general, a lot of fun for me. And funny, at least to other three-year-olds. If I say “can I have some of your ice cream?” his witty repost might be “can I have some of your poo?” And while I find this at least partly amusing – most of the time – I don’t always enjoy what being with like-minded similarly-aged people does to him. The descent into uncontrollable giggles and poo-upmanship talk grates after a (short) while.

And then we have the parents. Trying to wade the minefield of talk surrounding child-rearing and discipline practices, what our and their kids excel or don’t excel at, and what our latest parenting/career/marital trials might be, is a mammoth task. You run the risk of setting off a dispute between the other parents, or otherwise alienating one or both of the other parents by comments made by you or your dear spouse. Or the fact that your angel just cut their angel’s previously beautiful hair.

At the playground I have the urge to distribute compatibility checklists to other families to help determine how our group would survive a family dinner party. I’m starting to seriously think someone needs to set up a family dating service where matchmaking for the entire family can occur.

And, in the meantime, maybe these issues are what makes extended family so important: you can’t find a group you all love to hang around with, so you might as well hang with those about whom you have mixed feelings already!

Cynthia van Ginkel lives and loves in Port Moody.