Why I bring my child to breweries

I took my son to his first brewery when he was 11 days old.

It was November 2020. After nine months of not drinking and many months of being stuck at home during the (remember?) international pandemic, I was beyond thrilled to sip a beer in public.

Cuisine editor Connelly Hardaway and her husband have been taking their 3-year-old to area breweries since he was an infant

We carefully packed our infant into his carseat, brought two too many bags of supplies and made the five-minute car ride to Holy City Brewing. Does an Overly Friendly IPA taste better after nine months of sobriety, or is it always that good? The answer, I found, didn’t really matter. I had successfully become a mom who could have a little fun with a baby in tow.

I am well aware of the conversations surrounding bringing kids to breweries. It’s been going on for a while — Forbes’ 2018 piece from writer Tara Nurin, “Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up in Breweries,” makes some of the population’s opinion very clear. Former City Paper editor Kinsey Gidick even bemoaned her own brewery treks in a 2017 story that looks at kid-friendly brew eries in town: “Listen, I know that bringing my baby into a bar makes me a pariah.”

Kids at breweries can be annoying, I get it! I have seen small groups of children gather, collect sticks and quite literally chase an unlucky outcast. I’ve seen a kid that couldn’t have been older than 8 sprint past, kicking up rocks, exclaim “fuck!” with the glee it, admittedly, deserves. I wholeheartedly agree with the kid-related rules put forth by local breweries like Low Tide, and The Garden by Charles Towne Fermentory.

If your kids can’t handle being in a brewery space — which is fine because they are, um, kids — then don’t bring them. One day, sooner rather than later, I fear, I’ll be in the same boat. For now, though, I’m in this sweet spot of motherhood (remind me I said that next time my son screams bloody murder about waffles that are “TOO SCRATCHY”) where my 3½ year old likes to bring a backpack full of Hot Wheels to a brewery and quietly play with them in the dirt.

My husband and I get to drink one or two of our favorite beers —this isn’t the time, of course, for parents gone wild. We get a mother-in-law and uber for those once-in-a-blue-moon nights. On a brewery outing we’ll order some food from a fun pop-up concept and have, if we’re lucky, a five-minute conversation.

For the first two years of his life, my son let me push him in a stroller for a daily three- or four-mile trek through Park Circle. It was the best part of the day and sometimes, if it was near happy hour, we’d end up at Commonhouse Aleworks. The beertenders there got to see the baby in the stroller get bigger and bigger. I’d plunk him on the turf in front of the stage and he’d scoot (he had an incredible scoot crawl for 22 months of his life) then, eventually, walk.

The stroller walks are more infrequent now — his legs stick out of the seat! — but when we do end up at a local brewery, either Commonhouse, or Wind & Waves or Holy City, a wave of calm comes over me. So much of parenting is really, really challenging. But this we can do, this we know.

I order a beer, he busts out his cars (if we’re at Wind & Waves he’s thrilled to announce all the cars driving by on Spruill) and we get a few minutes, at least, of quiet coexistence. I’ll forever be grateful to breweries for that.