What Taipei’s famed parent-child centers are like
I don't know how to be a mom without them.
Taiwan has had one of the lowest birth rates in the world for a long time, and over a decade ago, the Taiwanese government distributed a survey to child-free adults to ask what incentives they needed to get breeding. The response was 1) money, 2) safe spaces for children to play. An indoor play center was opened in 2011 as a pilot project, and it was a smash success, with lines of families around the block. Now, there are free, government-run play centers in every Taipei district/neighborhood, in addition to the most spectacularly decked-out, thoughtful outdoor playgrounds you’ve ever seen in your life. Since our guy is only 19 months (“only”—I birthed him just yesterday!), he can’t yet enjoy the two-story slides and zip lines of the public parks, so we make regular trips to indoor centers. Here’s how it works!
Please note the laminated cards explaining which toys belong where, and how to play with them.
I make a reservation in advance on a Taipei City app, choosing a neighborhood and one of three available time slots of 90 minutes each. Between time slots, a staff tidies the toys and sanitizes all the surfaces. Each center is laid out differently, but they tend to have areas for dress-up, arts and crafts, kitchens with plastic food, little libraries with pillows, and a particularly squishy space for kids under two. There are Chuck E. Cheese-style ball pits, slides, and climbing units, and my favorite—themed areas and scenes, like a vet clinic where stuffed animals have their own national health cards. We arrive early (I was once 18 minutes late and they threatened to turn us away until I begged), point to the only name in English on their printed list, get our temperature taken, wash our hands at a tiny sink, and place our shoes on tiny shelves. Each toy rests atop a laminated card with a photo of the toy and an explanation of its educational value. Signs everywhere remind us to return the toys to their spots. Parents hover behind their kids, or sit in corners on their phones. On recent trips, my son has pressed his face to a fish tank, shaken plastic bottles full of glittery cotton balls in a “doctor’s office,” swum in a faux hot spring, shimmied down a slide his size at least 20 times, and banged spatulas on pans mounted in a designated noise-marking corridor. Eighty minutes into the time slot, a good-bye song begins to play and we are ushered toward the door, allowing ten minutes for coats and shoes and the inevitable tantrums that the session is over.
What a great idea!