The Work Behind the Play Date : Today’s parents must arrange for their children to spend time safely in one another’s homes. So they get on the phone and beg.

Most women think that when they get married, their dating days are over. But they’re wrong.

There’s a brief reprieve. Then they have children. Then begins the era of the play date.

The play date has come about largely for the same reason the “three strikes and you’re out” law was enacted. In a society perceived as increasingly dangerous and filled with public mayhem, everyone’s battening down the hatches. A lot of parents in my circle no longer feel safe letting their children play on the streets of their middle- to upper middle-class neighborhoods. And yet children must play.

So today’s mothers must arrange for their children to spend time safely in one another’s homes.

The play date and the rules surrounding it have evolved from this need.

Getting a play date for your child is simple. All you have to do is get on the phone once or twice a week and prostrate yourself before a dozen or so complete strangers.

“Hi, uh, (checking class roster) Diana. Can Billy come over and play with Stevie sometime this week?” You make the request in a cheerful and eager (not too eager) tone, as though it would be heaven to baby-sit for someone who would otherwise have to pay for it. In the ensuing silence you come to understand the difference between this kind of dating and the kind you did in high school. Now you are the pimply teen-age boy twisting in the wind.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Billy’s auditioning for a commercial on Wednesday.” A commercial? Oh well, to each his own. Move on.

“Hi, uh, Stacey. Can Marvin . . . ?”

“How nice of you to call. But Marvin will be playing with Jordan that day.” (Your Stevie hates Jordan.)

Your energy’s starting to flag. But you persist.

“Wednesday? Let’s see . . . that’s Scotty’s tae kwon do lesson . . . “

About half an hour in the Play Date Boiler Room and you’re starting to feel like Jack Lemmon in “Glengarry Glen Ross.” It ends when (1) God decides you’re sufficiently humiliated and you give up or (2) Your son’s dance card is finally filled for a few days.

Your reward comes days later as you serve Billy or Kyle or Murgatroyd a bologna sandwich and milk in your son’s room and the little guest says, “All these toys are broken. How come you don’t throw them out?”

As any mother knows, behavior that’s cute or at least tolerable from your own child often produces a stab of irritation coming from a stranger’s kid. Example: “What’s for dessert?” carries an air of arrant presumption when uttered by an 8-year-old who has just surveyed your son’s treehouse and pronounced it “dinky.”

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Fear of crime is the main cause of play dates. Another is the architects and city planners who, 40 years ago, insisted that the postwar middle class wanted to live in park-like settings away from the city. Urban neighborhoods used to offer enough density so any child could find 20 to 50 other playmates within a city block. In my part of town these days, you’re lucky to find a single age-mate for your child within 15 walking minutes.

The typical play date should last not more than three hours. Like the ladies’ lunch or the committee meeting, it starts off enthusiastically but undergoes a fast downhill slide between Hours 2 and 3.

The pickup hour has arrived! (Etiquette leaves the schlepping to the guest’s mom.) It’s time to act as though it’s all been a delight (“They play so well together!”), close the door behind young Murgatroyd and tempt your child with the latest offering on the Disney Channel. You’ve paid your dues. You’ve earned two free hours to read a book and take a nap.

If I were Miss Manners, I would dictate that play dates be reciprocated within two weeks. However, in my experience many play dates are never reciprocated at all, which can open you up to nightmares of insecurity.

Sometimes your child takes a shine to unreciprocating young Murgatroyd and nags you to arrange another play date with him. Now you’re the wretched lad asking for a second date--after failing to get a kiss at the door. Most mothers I know are self-effacing enough to hostess two, maybe three unreciprocated play dates before crossing Murgatroyd’s phone number off the class roster.

Luckily the era of the play date doesn’t last forever. Depending on how many children you have, you only have to put up with it for, oh, 12 to 20 years.