Redditor Wants To Know Who’s Supposed To Be Feeding All These Kids This Summer?

I’m fairly sure my parents had no idea where I was 80% of the time during the summer. Or, they had an idea but it was fairly nebulous. I could have been at Kelly’s house, or Becky’s house, or the Other Kelly’s house. Occasionally, I was with Other Jamie or Other Becky. (It was the ’80s: names were less creative.) All this to say was that, in a big neighborhood like ours, all doors were open and location was pretty fluid. That also meant I was eating lunch at a different location pretty much every day. So I was sort of baffled when I saw a recent post on Reddit’s r/Parenting board titled “Am I supposed to feed my child’s friend?”

“My daughter is 9 and this is the first summer some of her friends have had enough freedom to kind of just show up and hang around (as opposed to scheduled playdates). Are we expected to be feeding these kids lunch if they are over when my kids are going to eat? Can I just send them home and tell them to come back later? What is protocol these days?”

And, honestly, zero hate to this poster: it’s a legitimate question, especially in an age of allergies and specialized diets. But as an Italian mama, the very idea of questioning whether you should feed someone makes me want to bite my fist in horror. Of course you feed the babies. You feed all the babies! Even my kids have picked up on this: as soon as a friend comes over, they immediately offer them snacks and drinks. They’ve seen me do this with every guest and/or maintenance worker who’s ever entered my home. That’s simply their normal.

And it seems that’s the case for most of the nearly 1,000 commenters who responded…

“I feed every kid who comes in my house if they want food,” reads the most upvoted comment.

“We feed them even if they don’t want food. Haha it’s like a culture thing,” another chimed in.

“If we eat everyone eats,” said another, with the caveat, “I draw the line at picky though. I am not a line cook.”

One commenter highlighted why feeding other people’s children was important to them.

“When I was a kid my friend’s mom would take us through the McDonald’s drive through and when ordering ask if I had any money. I was like 8-10 years old. When I would respond ‘no’ she would then proceed to order her two kids happy meals and not me. I kid you not,” they shared. “She would also send me home or outside while they ate … Now I’m grown with kids of my own and I could never imagine not feeding my kid’s friends. I would rather be ‘put out’ than to send them away hungry. My kids’ friends = my kids. It takes a village and those same little kids will grow up to remember how kind you were to them and pay it forward.”

Many commenters touched upon the idea that this plays into the conundrum of wanting a village but not wanting to be a proverbial villager.

“A village doesn’t just magically appear unless we as parents put ourselves out there somehow,” one observed. “This is exactly how you begin to create community — providing light snacks or lunch for a few kids and then the hope is that eventually other parents return the favor and you start to build a village. It starts with snacks and has the potential to get bigger from there.”

But one of my favorite responses was diabolical in the best way…

“If you’re the family that feeds and welcomes your kids’ friends, guess who gets to know their kids better, and gets to know their friends, and as they grow older and their decisions become more ‘adult’ you’ll have influence,” they point out. Continuing, “I have best friends from when I was growing up whose parents I consider myself very close to … And that’s a really awesome connection to have.”

So, with the caveat of making sure it’s OK with the child’s parents, definitely feed the babies: not just to fill their bellies but to build the kind of social equity that benefits everyone in the long-run.