A Family-Friendly Community Offers Affordable Family Fun

Recently, I took my children to yet another free Bach recital in our small Midwestern town. This was not the first one we’ve attended since moving here two years ago, or even the first one this calendar year. Free recitals of various sorts have been a regular feature of our lives. At the end of the recital, an audience member announced a free symphony concert coming up that weekend. An extravagance of cultural riches!

Often, when we think about what makes a city, town, or neighborhood family friendly, we consider the quality of schools, crime rates and safety (e.g., can your child leave a bike out front unattended?), and walkability (are there sidewalks?). These are certainly important. But perhaps we do not sufficiently consider another important feature: entertainment. The availability of cheap or free high-quality entertainment greatly enhances family life. It is, I contend, the epitome of what family friendly means.

Consider this. Regardless of schooling choices and work schedules, most families have at least a few hours in the week for leisure—time that is not booked for something else. Some evenings may fall into this category, unless you have multiple kids involved in multiple extra-curriculars. Summer and holiday breaks also factor in. And then there are weekends. What do we do in our free time? The answer is: family entertainment. 

This is where things get potentially expensive. Consider your neighborhood. What can you do, ideally within walking distance or a very short drive, that would bring joy to every member of your family and will not bankrupt you, if done regularly? Many entertainment options have become prohibitively expensive, especially for larger families. A drive-in diner in my town, which many adults reminisce from the glory days of their childhood, is now too expensive for families to afford for dinner. Friends who grew up locally still take their kids out for ice cream there sometimes, just for nostalgia’s sake, but this is all they can afford now. Going to the movies, a mainstay activity for families and groups of teens for generations, is also too expensive for many families. Besides, there is the questionable quality of so much recent film fare. Finally, while museums, zoos, and cultural performances are great, often they are also more expensive than a large family can afford more often than just a few times per year. 

And yet, entertain the pint-sized masses dwelling in your home you must! Or else. Roman emperors diagnosed the issue at hand well: bread and circuses keep the peace in the empire. On a smaller scale, the same is true in every family. Yet there is more to entertainment than simply a way to pass the time and avert boredom. Good entertainment also is a gateway to beauty and the transcendent. In other words, entertainment should not only offer us another way to delight in our family but should also point us to something beautiful, true, and good. This, of course, brings us full circle to free Bach recitals in my small town.

The availability of cheap or free high-quality entertainment greatly enhances family life.

And free Handel’s Messiah performance coming later this fall—and very low-cost Nutcracker production by the local ballet company every December, and other dance performances throughout the year. And free art classes and nature walks, and kids’ classes, and other activities from the local parks district all year round. Also, clean local parks with excellent trails, and local playgrounds that are well-maintained. Or free admission the first Monday of each month to the stunning botanical garden nearby, along with an incredible public library with an indoor playground and activities for kids of all ages.

I could keep going, but you get the point. We have benefited from living in this small town that offers so much for our family—and most of it is free. Except, of course, nothing is truly free. Someone must pay for these activities, and I’m not talking just about taxes (which are quite reasonable here). Thankfully, there are a number of benefactors in the local community who generously support these free events, ensuring this town remains family friendly. 

After all, what is the alternative? If no one else were willing to subsidize these activities, the traditional model for it all is simple: every family can just pay for what they want to use. The likely result of such capitalism? Fewer families will use these resources. The local arts scene would be significantly less vibrant. The community would not feel as tightly knit and connected. We might recognize fewer people at the grocery store—because we would not have seen them at the local pumpkin patch or at the playground every warm Saturday morning in September or at a Christmas ballet recital in December. Such activities do not only bring joy to families, after all, but bring our communities together and hold them in care.

This is a good reminder of what kids offer to our towns and neighborhoods. In his book Family Unfriendly, Tim Carney has an anecdote about when his family was moving to another neighborhood and was saying goodbye to his kids’ previous parish school. As he apologized for not being more involved, a school staff member retorted: but you sent your kids here! This alone was already important involvement. The same principle applies to ways families support community entertainment. 

The most important thing families offer to their communities is their engaged presence, without which these events would not exist.

Put simply, the most important thing families offer to their communities is their engaged presence, without which these events would not exist. Art classes at the park or a library read-aloud for various ages would not be possible if dozens of families did not bring their children to these activities on a regular basis. And why hold free Bach or Handel performances, if no one comes to enjoy listening to the good music? It is up to communities, in turn, to continue to provide such entertainment to encourage families who are often in the stage of life where they are the most financially stretched and the least likely to be able to afford much paid entertainment. 

But this system is built on more than the desire to encourage families right now. There is latent recognition that families do not remain in that stretched phase forever. Kids get older and eventually become adults. Parents grow older, too, and perhaps become less financially stretched over time—and more likely to support the community by volunteering at camps and through financial donations.

To use Rousseau’s term for something very different, we can envision an organic social contract at work here: The town will provide wholesome family entertainment, supporting families and the community who might not be able to pay for such activities otherwise. Later on, many of the families who benefited from this will support this entertainment with cash or labor, ensuring its continuation for future generations of families in the community—who may well be the children of those same parents, now grown and raising families themselves. 

It is a beautiful cycle, when it can be achieved. Yet we cannot forget that it is also fragile—it requires continuous cultivation and trust from everyone involved. But for towns and neighborhoods that can achieve it, a family-friendly America is much more than a dream. It is reality. 

Nadya Williams is a homeschooling mother, Books Editor for Mere Orthodoxy, and the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church, and Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic.

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