When Patrice Cleary was preparing to open her Filipino restaurant Purple Patch in Mt. Pleasant in 2015, there was an empty space in the back of the basement-level dining room that wasn’t being used. It had hosted pinball machines in the restaurant that filled the space before, but Cleary had a different idea—one that revolved around her family.

“It was important for my son to be involved in the whole process of the restaurant. And so he had mentioned, ‘Where am I going to play with my friends?’ And so I said, ‘Why don’t we take this area in the back and we can create a kid’s space?’ And I put a 70-inch TV in the back, I had some extra booths we weren’t using so I sectioned it off, parents have donated toys, and there are some tables back there,” she says.

Cleary says the small area has since become a draw for parents who want to dine out with and not feel anxious that their kids will get bored—or worse. She says it’s a fear she’s often felt as a parent (her son is now 11, but she also has a six-month-old) and one she wanted to address as a restaurant owner.

“Being a parent, it’s this daunting task of, ‘Where do we go for dinner?’ You’re in Washington, D.C., and there’s just very few places to go to with our kids that are kid-friendly,” she says. “I really created it because I’m a mom and as a business owner. There’s very few places for kids to go where parents feel comfortable, and kids feel comfortable too.”

Starting a family is a shock in many ways. There are new responsibilities, significant costs, an exhausting schedule, and a feeling that a previous lifestyle is gone, done and over. A late night at a bar? Not likely, certainly not often. A pleasant meal at a restaurant? Sure, but you’re on thin ice. Is the baby going to fuss? Is the toddler going to throw a tantrum or toss food all over the floor? (Which would be worse?)

Some parents retreat. Meals at home, spare the occasional foray when a babysitter can be found. Others forge ahead, dragging the family out. But even then, there’s the fear that the bar, brewery, or restaurant—no, not Chuck E. Cheese—may not be family-friendly. Will there be food options for the kids? Maybe some toys to play with? An understanding staff?

And on the flip side, bar and restaurant owners often want to be accommodating. But they may worry whether the sight of a young family will scare away a childless couple, who will probably spend more money and make less of a mess.

Are there certain places that kids just shouldn’t go?

From Rachel Perrone’s perspective, it behooves local bars and restaurants to accommodate families. When she first moved to Adams Morgan with two young kids, she remembers coming across a weekly kids happy hour at The Reef, a three-story bar on 18th Street.

“They knew us, they took care of us, it was neighborhood-y, and it was nice to have a place right here in the neighborhood where the kids could dance and let off some steam, especially when the weather was miserable. We’d get something to eat, Mom would have a pint, and we’d be home in time for bed,” she says.

But after the bar closed in 2013, Perrone says she had little luck convincing other restaurateurs to host similar weekly events. And she thinks places that don’t accommodate families are missing an opportunity to gain a committed clientele.

But that doesn’t always work out. Sometimes bar and restaurant owners find themselves having to impose limits on when parents can have their kids around.

In 2016, Petworth neighborhood bar and restaurant Slash Run started asking parents to leave by 8 p.m., largely because of incidents of kids running into the kitchen and a parent changing their child on an outdoor table. The following year, Park View beer garden Midlands did the same, citing cases of kids running out of the establishment towards Georgia Avenue. And late last year, Baltimore’s Union Brewery banned kids after 6 p.m., sparking a fierce social media backlash.

“We’d see very large numbers of unsupervised children breaking games, sprinting around the taproom, taking over the whole area, and creating a dangerous atmosphere,” the brewery’s co-founder told The Baltimore Sun.

Midlands owner Peyton Sherwood recently did away with the no-kids-after-8 policy, largely because he says parents were harassing his staff about it. (Sherwood is the son of Tom Sherwood, resident analyst on WAMU’s “The Politics Hour.”) But he says he still sees parents who fail to supervise their kids at the beer garden.

“Most parents are great. They’re very understanding and cautious when they take their kids to bars,” he says. “But a lot of parents, they just let their kids go, and I don’t know what that thought process is. It’s bad.”

For as much as Perrone—whose kids are now 11 and 9—touts kid-friendly establishments, she recognizes there are limits. When she was searching for a bar or restaurant to replace The Reef, she focused on places with extra space like a second floor and no existing happy hour scene for the childless.

“I would like to relax and have a good time too, and if I’m bothering you and you’re making dirty faces at me, none of us are having a good time,” she says. “We wanted a place where our kids could run around, and we wouldn’t be in anyone’s way.”

That extra space has worked to the benefit of Capitol Cider House, which opened in Petworth last year, and has hosted kid-friendly events on weekend mornings (including shows with local kid’s music band Rocknoceros) and has board games and a train table for the little ones—inspired by one of founder Jared Fackrell’s three kids.

“For us, it makes complete sense. I would argue that it depends on where the business is setting up and what’s the concept. But in the manufacturing-of-alcohol space, they tend to dovetail nicely with catering to families because they tend to be bigger than a typical sit-down place,” he says.

That’s the case at the 3 Stars Brewing Company, where the taproom includes cornhole, Jenga, and paper and crayons to color with. And some breweries across the country have gone a step further, creating completely set aside spaces for kids: Craft Hall in Philadelphia, Lake Placid Pub and Brewery in upstate New York and Peabody Heights Brewery in Baltimore.

Fackrell says he also benefits from the often diverging schedules of the childbearing and the childless: One group often leaves as the other starts to arrive. And he says that in his experience, more often than not, parents choose carefully in deciding where to go with their kids.

“For us, it’s worked out fairly well. Nap time and all of that shuffles in between the family-type folks and those without kids,” he says. “As a parent myself, I feel like most parents have a pretty good sense of whether or not they should be somewhere with kids.”

And the somewheres where they can be may be growing in number. As the older end of the millennial cohort start having their own families, more bars and restaurants are trying to keep them coming back by better catering to their kids. But it’s a slow shift, largely because it’s also cultural. A 2017 survey of Mexican diners found that 63 percent believed that family-friendly restaurants are important. In the U.S. and Canada, it was only 35 percent.

For Patrice Cleary of Purple Patch, it’s something she understands well. Her mother is from the Philippines, and her father served in the military, so she lived abroad for much of her life. She says other countries have a more accepting attitude towards parents brings their kids into bars and restaurants.

It’s something she has tried to create with the kid’s space in her restaurant — even if it doesn’t fly with all of her customers.

“I did have this one review that said they’ll never come here again because these parents feel entitled to let their kids run around. For me, having that one or two or three bad reviews because kids are in a restaurant, it’s worth it because it’s not about building an environment just for adults, but creating an environment where all of us can come together and feel comfortable,” she says. “There’s plenty of places for adults to go to in D.C., but there’s very few places for families to go to in D.C. where the kids are comfortable.”

And, she says, keeping kids comfortable is something of a necessity. “We’ve all realized if the kids aren’t happy,” she says, “nobody’s happy.”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.