“Partying, for me, is not just a gin and tonic after a restaurant. It’s dancing all night, without constraints, without looking at the time. It’s disconnecting the “parenting phase” of my electrical panel! It’s part of my life balance.” Laure (name changed), 36, lives in Lyon, where she is a marriage and family counselor by day, and passionate about electro and techno by night. Her motherhood – she has three children aged 10, 6 and 3 – has not affected her love for the dance floor, its unusual encounters and its range of possibilities.
But there was no question of taking over as babysitter in the early morning and sleeping off her hangover with her offspring. A rule learned the hard way two years ago. Returning from a boozy evening, she and her husband relieved the babysitter and collapsed into an alcoholic sleep. In the early morning, their youngest, 1 and a half years old at the time, woke up early to ask for his bottle. A few moments later, there he was with the empty bottle in one hand and a packet of Atarax in the other, a bite mark clearly visible on the anti-anxiety tablets, even though they were stored in the toiletry bag.
Panicked, the parents called the poison control center, which referred them to the pediatric emergency room for a twelve-hour observation. They left at the end of the day, dazed, with their son safe and sound, with no trace of ingested medication. “That moment was the electroshock, remembers Laure. That night, when I chained drinks, I only thought about myself, not about my son or the next day. It was a parental mistake that could have been dramatic. It was the first and especially the last time. For a while, the couple stopped going out. Then he made sure the party didn’t spill over into the family. Laure sums up: “Either the children are looked after until the following evening, or better, the day after, or we split up – one goes out while the other stays to look after the children. But we are a parental team like a party team, we very rarely split up.”
“Tendency to give up everything”
Partying, the cement of the parental couple? For Constance (who did not wish to give her name), mother of three children aged 12, 9 and 7 living in Marseille, these nocturnal epics have long been breaths of fresh air that she considered essential for herself and for her couple. “I had a great need to escape through partying, especially when the children were small, she says. It was a way to get away from everyday life, with my husband, to dance, to sing, to laugh, in short to be something other than parents together. I then had a tendency to let go of everything, perhaps a little too much. Today, the demands of early childhood have faded, and the rhythm of her outings has balanced out with family life. On weekends, the now 38-year-old now takes great pleasure in sharing activities with five people.
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